[0:12] Actually, no. But whatever. Apparently motivated by this petition, the Australian shops “Target and Kmart have decided to stop selling the game, GTA5. Target and Kmart stores pulled the game after a petition launched by three female survivors of violence gained more than 40,000 signatures. Target said the decision “was in line with the majority view of customers” (http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30328314)

[0:39] Yeah. Let’s ignore the fact that there is no more evidence that videogames with a sexual element to them cause real-world sexual violence, than games with violence in them cause violence in the real world. After all, as many will tell you, it’s actually quite easy to tell the difference between the fantasy of a computer game, and reality:

[1:00] Total Annihilation: “What began as conflict over the transfer of consciousness from flesh to machines escalated into a war which has decimated a million worlds”

[1:09] Thunderf00t: And, just because someone has experienced sexual violence in their life—which I’m sure is a traumatic enough experience—that doesn’t give them a blank card to veto any media that anyone else might want to watch.

[1:24] I mean, look, there are plenty of war survivors out there—which is also very traumatic. But oddly enough, Target didn’t seem to have a problem with selling war games where you can kill thousands of- men- in brutal and gruesome ways. WHY the selective outrage?

[1:54] And what do you know, it’s already got more signatures than the petition to ban GTA5. And with good reason. ANYthing in GTA5 is vanilla compared to the Bible. A book that not only advocates burning witches—it commands it and in real life. A book that advocates killing all men, women, and children, but keeping the virgins for yourself:

[2:21] “And Moses said to them, ‘Why have they saved all the women alive? . . . Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women and children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep for yourselves.’”

[2:41] Thunderf00t: DAMN the selective outrage of you social justice warriors just has to be seen to be believed.

[0:00] news clips: “Well it’s a simple idea with big potential, turning polluted air into actual products that most of us will use every day.”
“Absolutely! Here in a Southern California plastics factory you are NOT gonna imagine WHERE this comes from. Just wait until you see this story.”
“We connect to a Newlight through our technology innovation funnel at Dell . . . who’s doing, of all things, making plastic out of carbon in the air. It almost seemed like it was too good to be true.”

[0:26] Thunderf00t: WOW. So the solution to global warming is here:

[0:31] clip from “Plastic made from air may help solve carbon emissions crisis” (CBS): “This building in Costa Mesa, California, looks unremarkable. And what’s happening inside sounds unreal.”
“So that’s plastic? That was literally made out of thin air?”
“We would be breathing this right now.”

[0:46] Thunderf00t: A way of turning carbon in the air into plastic. And the GREAT thing is, it’s gonna be CHEAPER than regular plastic. And it’s been featured on USA Today, The Guardian, The Weather Channel, CBS, and of course, Fox News, and the computer company, Dell, is promoting this AMAZING new technology, hard—so it can’t be complete bullshit. Right? I mean surely, someone must have fact-checked this. Right?

[1:16] So, firstly they claim that they’re gonna be making this plastic out of exhaust gases:

[1:21] clip from The Weather Channel: “-supposed to be a big game-changer for climate change, and Dave, you were telling us earlier about how they take the carbon out of the atmosphere and turn into plastic. How exactly do they do that, and Stephen our producer said, ‘well, why don’t they just hook up kind of a vacuum to, you know—smokestacks—and just get it right like that?’

[1:43] clip from The Weather Channel: “Yeah, that would be the way to do that. And they ARE doing that. In the future they hope to get it from a concentrated source. Right now they’re taking it from the air and they’re taking it from concentrated sources. But everything you see here—the cups, the bag, the plates—even, in fact, the chair that I’m sitting on right now, it’s all made from this plastic that comes from the air, and it’s one man’s dream.”

[2:07] Thunderf00t: And here’s their CEO saying that, just like trees take carbon dioxide out of the air:

[2:13] clips from Weather Channel, Dell: “pull Southern California’s polluted air from the roof and make something with all that carbon coming from cars, power plants, and farms.”
“Plants do this every single day. The way a tree grows is by pulling carbon out of the air.”
“Every single thing that you see that’s green—that’s ALL produced by pulling carbon out of the air. So we do precisely the same thing. It’s all around us. We just found a way to pull it out of an airstream and then turn it into a plastic molecule, and that plastic molecule we can then turn into shapes and things like that.”
“The environmental impact has the potential impact to be massive.”

[2:47] Thunderf00t: Yeah, that’s mostly right. Trees take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere AND water and a load of energy from the sun, and turn that into sugar—which is then polymerized to make things like cellulose, which is essentially wood.

[3:03] Now, plants GET that energy from the SUN. They are solar powered. Where’s he gonna get his energy from? Solar Roadways [LOL] , thorium-powered cars? Because the one place he can’t get it from is burning fossil fuels, ‘cos that would dump about as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as he’s going to be sequestering.

[3:24] As of rough chemical compositions, most plastics are basically petroleum-based polymers. And their chemical composition is basically that of oil; which is approximately this:

[3:37] Sugars and their polymers, which is cellulose, make up things like wood. And can, at a simple chemical composition-level be looked at as partially combusted hydrocarbon. That is, IF you could simply transform these petroleum-based polymers into wood, it would release a load of energy. And then of course you can simply finish off that oxidation in a very simple manner just by burning wood, which everyone knows releases a load of heat. I mean, it’s basically turning wood, into carbon dioxide, water, and a load of energy; effectively reversing what photosynthesis did in the first place.

[4:16] But energy is conserved here. There are no free lunches. If you wanna turn that carbon dioxide back into wood, you gotta put a load of energy in from somewhere and it will cost you AT LEAST as much energy as you got out from burning it in the first place.

[4:34] And the same thing is true if you’re trying to turn carbon dioxide into hydrocarbon-based plastics. WHERE is this energy going to come from?

[4:46] Secondly of course, this would just be a drop in the ocean. I mean from my last video you’ll recall that humans breathe out about 1 kilogram of carbon dioxide per day. That’s just your carbon footprint for being alive. And then you have all these people from CBS just gasping with awe at how someone has maybe sequestered 50 or so grams of carbon in a cellphone cover:

[5:13] clip from CBS “Plastic made from air may help solve carbon emissions crisis”: “So I know this sounds more like magic than science, so I wanted to make sure you guys could actually touch and feel this . . .”

[5:35] I mean, seriously, that’s only about 1/20th of their personal daily metabolic carbon footprint and they’re impressed by it!

[5:43] news clips: “Newlight is selling its plastic to companies such as furniture maker KI, which uses it to create chairs. There are also air carbon cellphone cases, soap dishes, and even plastic bags.”
“a big game-changer for climate change, and Dave, you were telling us earlier about how they take the carbon out of the atmosphere and turn into plastic.”
“At a recent Fortune Magazine event, Michael Dell announced he will use Newlight’s air carbon bags to wrap his Dell computers.”

[6:17] Thunderf00t: And just a personal metabolic carbon footprint is peanuts compared to the total carbon footprint. I mean, like I was saying, this is a drop in the ocean AT BEST. I mean let’s keep this in perspective:

[6:32] clip from Weather Channel: “2011, the U.S. alone generated almost 14 MILLION TONS of plastic. Only about 8 percent was EVER recycled.”

[6:39] Thunderf00t: 14 million tons might sound like a lot. Until you realize that the U.S. carbon footprint is about 5,000 MILLION TONS, which was achieved by burning about 2,000 million tons of oil. Yeah, ALL of the plastics that you consume are give-or-take only take about 1 percent of your ENTIRE carbon footprint. If we were talking about carbon dioxide, he’s simply talking crap.

[7:12] Buuut it turns out that all that speak about basically doing what trees do—not entirely honest. Turns out that this process is actually gonna run on methane. That’s right—it’s basically turning hydrocarbon into plastic—which sounds exactly like what the oil industry is currently doing.

[7:32] So, what’s the difference? Well, they claim that they’re gonna get the methane OUT of the air:

[7:38] clip from Dell: “We connect to a Newlight through our technology innovation funnel at Dell . . . who’s doing, of all things, making plastic out of carbon in the air. It almost seemed like it was too good to be true.”

[7:48] Thunderf00t: And I simply call BULLSHIT on that. Well you’ve gotta understand that there really isn’t much methane in air—and for good reason—it gets oxidized away in our atmosphere really quite quickly with a half-life of about 10 years.

[8:01] Now, while it’s true methane IS a very big greenhouse gas, it’s also true that its concentration in air is very low—only about 1 part per million. There is just bugger-all methane in the air.

[8:16] So, I mean, just some ballpark numbers, the cubic meter of air is what this girl is essentially sitting in, weighs about 1 kilogram. So if you wanted to make about 1 kilogram of plastic, you would need to harvest the methane of 1 MILLION cubic meters of air with 100 percent efficiency. I mean, look, this is the tube they claim they’re sucking all our air through to make this plastic:

[8:41] clip from Weather Channel: “pull Southern California’s polluted air from the roof and make something with all that carbon.”
“This plastic comes from the air.”
“And this is it right here, more than 50 percent of THIS plastic right here came from the air on top of this building.”

[9:01] Thunderf00t: So let’s do a real simple back-of-the-envelope calculation. For a TRIVIAL task of say, producing 1 kilogram of plastic per hour—that means they’ve gotta suck 1 MILLION cubic meters of air through that tube. That tube, if you’re generous, is about 0.1 meters by 0.1 meters. So if they’re gonna achieve the paltry task of making 1 kilogram of plastic per hour, iiit turns out they’d have to be sucking air through that tube at about 100 TIMES the speed of sound. And that’s just the flow problem. Unless they’ve got some magic method for extracting the methane out of the air, it’s simply pointless.

[9:41] Now, 100 times the speed of sound—about a 100 times the speed of a bullet—might not sound impossible to some people. So let me put this into more human dimensions. So, we basically need about 1 million cubic meters of air to create a single kilogram of plastic. Well, by happy coincidence, the volume of the Empire State Building is also about 1 million cubic meters. So the bare minimum you would have to do is pump a volume of air the size of the Empire State Building—ignoring all the stuff about extracting the methane and turning it into plastic.

[10:20] But just for the moment, let’s just take a look at the costs of pumping that sort of volume of air. It’s actually going to take a sort of industrial pump that can pump about 2 cubic meters per second, and it runs on about 2 kilowatts. So this pump would take about one week to pump that million cubic meters of air. And just the grid electricity to pump that volume of air would generate about 200 kilograms of carbon dioxide—the equivalent of burning about a 100 kilograms of oil to generate 1 KILOGRAM of plastic.

[10:58] And just to put that into some perspective, the petrochemical industry basically works by taking about 1 kilogram of oil and turning it into about 1 kilogram of plastic.

[11:08] clip from “Dell AirCarbon Plastic – Made from Air, Not Oil”: “Gone from doing less harm, to do no harm, to ‘let’s make it better than we left it’.”
“Newlight’s technology is such a great partner for that, but they’re making it better.”

[11:22] Thunderf00t: This really is the problem that you face, that you have essentially 1,000 tons of air, and you’re trying to extract from that 1 kilogram of methane, which can maybe be converted into about a kilogram of plastic.

[11:36] Look, this is the thing—you can get methane from the petrochemical industry fairly cheaply. But these ‘air carbon’ people claim that their process is cheaper than the petrochemical industry:

[11:47] clip from The Weather Channel: “although Mark truly believes he has found a way to make air plastic cost less than oil plastic.”

[11:55] Thunderf00t: In which case, the obvious question, if your air methane is cheaper than petrochemical industry methane, why not just sell it as ‘fuel’? You know, just for burning. It would be incredibly bio-friendly, as methane’s about 30 times as bad a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide.

[12:15] I mean there’s just something about this that REALLY stinks. That is, I simply don’t believe that there would EVER be a cost-effective way of extracting methane from the atmosphere like this.

[12:27] Now if you were doing this with BIO sources of methane—weeell, now that’s a little different. But that’s MUCH more what the petrochemical industry is essentially doing at the moment. And calling it “air carbon”, you know, pulled out of the air:

[12:40] clip from The Weather Channel: “Right. So this is actually air carbon.”
“Air carbon is the product name they use for this white powder.”
“How does this become plastic though?”
“Heat it up, and air carbon becomes a plastic called, PHA.”
CBS clip: “So that’s plastic that was literally made out of thin air?”
“We would be breathing this right now.”

[12:58] Thunderf00t: -seems to be ENTIRELY misleading.

[13:01] So, in summary, if they’re talking about making plastic from the carbon dioxide in the air, then they’re simply talking crap, as it could NEVER be cost-effective unless you can find a cheaper source of energy than fossil fuels. If he’s talking about methane in the air, then he’s MORE full of crap than the Empire State Building is full of air. And if he’s talking about bio methane created on a farm IN A BIOLOGICAL REACTOR—you know, to generate the methane in the first place—he’s talking about bio methane generated on a farm and he’s not talking about pulling it out of the air. And all those claims about ‘carbon out of the air’—not really true.

[13:47] clip from Dell: “Almost all plastics today come from fossil fuels. So, the difference with air carbon is, air carbon is made from air and carbon that we would otherwise be breathing right now.”

[13:56] Thunderf00t: Look, there’s ONE polymer that is the UNDISPUTED claim to call itself ‘air carbon’. It’s the most abundant biomolecule on Earth: cellulose, created by plants and the key structural component of trees—you know, wood. You wanna use ‘air carbon’ to wrap your computers, use paper. THEN at least the carbon GENUINELY came from the atmosphere and not some fraudulent claims about being able to make plastic cost-effective out of thin air. But I still just wail with despair at just how much scientific illiteracy there is throughout the mainstream media.

[14:38] clip from CBS: “So I know this sounds more like magic than science, so I wanted to make sure you guys could actually touch and feel this.”

[14:45] Thunderf00t: And just how a large company like Dell can promote this pseudo-science without even a cursory look as to if those claims are even remotely possible.

[14:57] clip from Dell: “We connect to a Newlight through our technology innovation funnel at Dell . . . who’s doing, of all things, making plastic out of carbon in the air. It almost seemed like it was too good to be true.”

So C0nc0rance had an exchange with PZ Myers about free speech. Needless to say C0ncordance hits basically every relevant point, and PZ sadly reaches for every justification for removing peoples ability to comment on a PUBLIC forum that’s been used by creationists, science denialists and pretty much anyone else on youtube whose ideas dont hold water. The video really says it all.

PZ has now disabled comments and ratings on videos that were unpopular, notably why I was thrown off ‘freethoughtblogs’ and ‘atheism+‘ (not surprising given the rating were comparable the VFX talking about the holocaust). This is taken straight from the playbook of the Discovery Institute, Answers in Genesis, Dawahfilms, Nephilimfree and a horde of others. Even Venomfangx has backbone to allow ratings on his videos, but not PZ. In fact the real hoot is PZ’s ideas on free speech pretty much mirror those of dawahfilms, whose great ideas on free speech can be found here (oh yes, savor the irony of a private playlist on freespeech).

Indeed PZ justification for limiting free speech like this when he gets the chance makes it rather difficult to work out if his ‘forum rules’ are written in plain draconian English or as a rather unfunny joke.

PZ Myers forum rules:

The Absolute Law

I AM THE BOSS, and don’t you forget it. I have sole and absolute power here; I can ban you, I can destroy your comments, I can shut down whole threads. I am a being of caprice; I don’t have to justify anything I do. So when I tell you to stop doing something, stop. Don’t argue with me. You don’t like that I banned your friend? Tough. Don’t complain to me. I will do as I will to make this place the kind of party I want to attend, and that’s all that matters.

This law supercedes all other rules.

The sad thing is I predicted that the second PZ found out that people weren’t agreeing with him on everything he said, those comments would be straight off to the memory hole, and that’s why I took the precaution of caching the last 500 of them.

So here they are in all their glory, the comments that PZ doesn’t want you to see!

28000 words that PZ was more than happy to obliterate at the click of a mouse.

It is disingenuous and dishonest to represent an association based on self interest under a banner called “free thought”. It is insulting to reject any supernatural existence and use the term “spirit of enlightenment”. Poor, corrupt and undisciplined thought. It embodies evangelic dogma synonymous with dishonest sermonizing. Power corrupts even when perceived as intellectual power. Arguments aside, this video represents a small man with dogmatic corrupt thought. A disappointment.

The spirit of the enlightenment is completely compatible with rejecting supernatural claims. Any cursory review of enlightenment writers would confirm that. Surely you aren’t suggesting that the use of the word ‘spirit’ is wrong?

Progressive socio-political views and actions are also completely compatible with enlightenment ideals.

You have conflated so many contradictory positions that you must have trouble following the conversation.

If wrongheaded means my head not yours ….well said. My impression of your enlightened “spirit” suggests only that your reasoned definition should prevail, all hypocrisy notwithstanding, I question it’s compatibility. I reserve the right not to follow “the conversation” but to question it. I cannot accept ethical hypocrisy and dishonesty as progressive reason. Competition for popularity does not represent disciplined thought. It is corrupt and disappointing.

Full of yourself much? Ethical hypocrisy? They called their blog network “free thought blogs”…they didn’t copyright the words “free thought”. When saying that we reject the supernatural why don’t you substitute…”We reject supernatural claims which can’t be verified.” I can reasonably say that I reject the notion of the loch ness monster without having to follow it up with a disclaimer about undiscovered species that might be real. You’re being an asshat and pretending to be openminded.

I you cant read a sentence because there’s caps and italics maybe ou should get some glasses. CAPS add emphasis alon with italics so as to understand the way the sentence is MEANT to be read. If that annoys you than you to me would seem like a prude.

PZ, you’ve clearly misrepresented the function of his “forms in triplicate” argument. What he is doing there is called exaggeration for effect. No one, not him, his readers or anyone else actually believes this is what anyone at FTB would demand of him. He is simply making the point that obtaining consent would ruin the moment. Social interaction is messy, even the deeply conscientious sort. Now, I had no dog in this fight but this, along with your stream of ad homs, have made up my mind. 😦

Actually, Doug, it isn’t plagiarism, it’s a common if somewhat particular expression. Further, it is not a reduction to absurdity for the simple reason that no one, other than you, is taking it literally. You do know what it’s called when one refuses to apply a charitable interpretation under these circumstances, don’t you? I think you do.

“IN ORDERS SIGNED IN TRIPLICATE SENT IN, SENT BACK AND BURIED IN SOFT PEAT FOR THREE MONTHS AND RECYCLED AS FIRELIGHTERS” is not a “common if somewhat particular expression” you moron >_> it’s plagiarizing Adams, and it is clearly reductio ad absurdum.

Whether it’s plagiarism or paying homage is debatable and very much beside the point. Further, referencing “orders in triplicate” or some variation involving triplicate was a common sarcastic complaint regarding bureaucracy prior to the development of word processing, as partially evidenced by Adam’s use. You should know this. What’s more, it would only be a reduction to the absurd IF there was the expectation that it be taken literally. Clearly, there is no such expectation.

How about this, for the sake of your fixation and because I really don’t care due to its lack of relevance, we’ll say it is plagiarism. Now, what impact on the original point does that have? Is it more than zero?

No, it isn’t.

For the record, I’ve debated fundamentalists with more manners AND apparent critical thinking skills than you. You make declarations and offer no supporting reason at all. It is as if you believe you can win a debate by fiat. I will waste no more time with you.

Dwell on that for a few moments. Seriously, that’s meme-worthy. It works in so many situations: rape, burglary, trespassing, kidnapping, grand theft auto, pre-emptive military invasion, copyright infringement, ejaculating on your partner’s face without their permission… It’s like a universal catch-phrase for assholes.

Yes, why don’t you think about that for a moment? Why don’t you think about the difference between taking fifty cents without permission and fifty thousand dollars, for just a moment. Or do things like scale and consequences not have any meaning in your life? You’re right, it is meme worthy but not for the reasons you thought.

How is Free Thought not synonymous with Free Speech exactly? Doesn’t one use free speech to express free thought? Since when is Free Thought dictated by a collective of a small group of people? I’m not saying I agree or disagree with TF00t, I’m just arguing as to what Free Thought should really mean. Maybe you should change the name of your blog, it is misleading.

I did watch the video. I just don’t agree with PZ’s definition. If he is describing the ideals of the enlightenment… fine. However, if someone is a Free Thinker then they should be able to use logic, reason and science to discuss anything. On the other hand, should one be respectful and use polite words when engaged in a debate with some one who does not agree with them? Absolutely!

I didn’t hear anything about “Free Thinker”. Are you accidentally making up a new category and suggesting he must subscribe to it?

It seemed to me that “freethough” movement has sensible boundaries. You don’t bother spending time discussing whether you should blow up a building with someone, on the basis that you “must” discuss anything. You draw a line somewhere and you move on. The line drawn by PZ is the “freethought” movement and it sounded completely sensible to me.

Have to say, did really care much for Tfoots drama on this issue, but now you’ve stated your side Im now with him. All youve said is is ftb is a place your free to agree with your group or leave. Its a good thing youve cited your case to peer review by the wider community, I suggest you look at the results. Maybe think of a new name for your blog stte, our way or the highway does not suggest to me free thought, or indeed any form of freedom.

PZ – Thunderf00t did not attack feminism, but merely pointed out that sometimes, some feminist positions might be over-stated. That is not trolling or disrespectful; it is merely thought-provoking. I find him often too negative in tone & likely to turn away the religious by style rather than win them with logic. You’re right about his poll. Nevertheless, your ban is clearly wrong. Extremism & intolerance are hypocritical & hurt our cause. You’re both acting on emotion/ego. Please stop.

Feminism IS religious dogma. It assumes that all men are brutes, willing to rape at any moment. It assumes that all domestic violence is initiated by men, even though it’s about 50/50. It assumes that most non-domestic violence is suffered by women, even though the vast majority of men murdered and assaulted are men, a claim that holds true even when you add in rapes. Feminism isn’t based on science (in this case statistics), it is based on the ultra-sensitive sense of women’s comfort.

Make no mistake, this is the catalyst for A+. The A+ group is clearly trying to demonize Tfoot and those who support him, for his alleged misogyny and general assholery, and the presumed misogyny and assholery of his his followers. All under a false banner of social justice and diversity. I’m not the biggest fan of Thunder anymore, he is a bit of an arrogant prick, but at least he’s not dishonest..

I admire a good deal of your work, Myers, and have greatly enjoyed some of your videos. Honestly I think you’re a deeper thinker than Thunderf00t, who tends to go after easy targets. I do however find Thunderf00t to be far more meticulous in his dissection of arguments, almost to the point of pedantry.

I don’t think this video does you a great service. You speak in extremely vague generalities, when we all know that what happened is Thunderf00t rattled your cage on Elevatorgate.

In this video, I heard a completely reasonable view point, explained clearly. I have no idea what you’re talking about – that he spoke in generalities – probably because you are the one actually speaking in vague generalities.

6:59 No, it doesn’t mean either or those two things. you completely forgot that perhaps you guys were so emotionally invested in the subject that you blinded yourself to what was said and started imagining statements that were never made.

Wow. I had some doubts about this argument between TF and PZ. But this video settles it. What serious person would call someone who simply disagrees with him a troll? I really hope that PZ just doesn’t entirely understand what trolling means, otherwise, he had lost all his credibility.

Thing is, his views are compatible with the goals you’ve stated in this video. He presented a rational argument explaining why he’s skeptical that sexual harassment is as big of an issue as it’s being made out to be.

As a female who has been to multiple freethought/skeptic/atheist conventions, I’m inclined to agree. Sexual harrassment is not as big a deal as the few are making it out to be.

The fact that you won’t admit that you are attacking him dogmatically just disgusts me.

Speaking of censorship – my comments are now progressively disappearing from this debate, including the top commented 29 thumbs up comment opposing PZ Meyers. I guess its all in the name of free thought.

All you Motherfuckers that don’t agree with PZ Myers will be BANNED from this site! YOU don’t seem to get it, your job is to say what he tells you to say, when he tells you to say it, and with the correct tone! PZ defines what the Atheist movement is because that’s his right! He is smarter and more educated than you are, so just sit down shut the hell up and if he wants to you have an opinion he will give you one! If PZ wasn’t right, everyone would just ignore him!

Perhaps so. Or perhaps that’s quibbling over details. I mean, even a blog called freethought surely has limits on acceptable discussion. Being an apologist for the the rape of women probably falls outside their mission statement.

I don’t really remember his comments anymore so I could be way off the mark, but it seemed that he was suggesting that women at the conference somehow deserved to be sexually assaulted. In fairness, I have argued myself that when women knowingly draw sexual attention to themselves, that they must take a big share of responsibility when they then receive that attention.

Your job is to listen to a video before commenting. PZ is clearly making the distinction between freethought, which is a specific philosophy whose definition existed long before PZ came along, and atheism, which is merely a lack of belief in the gods. He explains this at the very beginning of the video. If tfoot does not subscribe to the freethought philosophy, he shouldn’t be participating in a freethought forum.

I didn’t say that, I said you’re trying to justify a wrong. PZ was wrong, and like I said I’m happy to see all the people in here calling him on it. I Would like to see him resign or simply be ignored by the non-believers community.

Yes I did read it and I’ve followed this whole PZ vs Thunderfoot conflict, and it seems obvious that PZ went into damage control mode and concocted a story with the aim of maximum face-saving. His behavior here was reprehensible from such a “respected academic”.

PZ is educated and he has studied areas of biology that I have not. He’s not always right, but most of the time he has something interesting to say which makes me think. If my curiosity is peaked enough, I delve into my own further research. We need more people like PZ who add to the discussion, and less trolls like you who sarcastically roam the internet spewing nonsense.

Being confident in your opinion because you have studied the evidence is not unwise. It is unwise to not accept valid criticism based on new evidence of a better interpretation of current evidence. His smooth rationalizations may seem breathtaking to you because you are not used such a calm, well thought out argument, as opposed to an emotional appeal.

Wisdom is understanding what you do know and what you don’t. I’d worry about an expert who exhibited a plethora of self doubt in his content.

No, obviously I wasn’t clear. It is breathtaking tosh delivered with nauseating indifference to reality, with no sincerity or rsepect for his audience. It is utterly self serving sophistry – hollow word games to satisfy his own ego. And he is no expert in this!

You’re still not clear. I’d love to hear your analysis of PZ and Tf’s respective arguments and actions. PZ never had such a grand lapse in judgement as to hack through a backdoor into the private mailing list from which he was recently ejected.

He is not expert, but he is pretty experienced with making rational, logical arguments. Tf mostly appeals to emotions and does not make judgments rationally, but by yelling louder and angrily tearing down straw men.

Well I don’t know about this hacking incident, but I am talking about Meyers on this Meyers’ video. Thinking Meyers has erred does not mean I automatically endorse everything TF does. TF is a whole other matter.

However I give up because you don’t know what a straw man is. Straw men are built by the person who will then tear them down. Imaginary bad guys, and tearing them down diverts from the conversation. You haven’t said anything about the Meyers in this video.

When I heard about the whole debacle, I watched a bunch of TF’s youtube videos. He has a few that are pretty good, and I can understand why he has such a large following. However, I read his blog postings on freethought, and the majority of it was an emotional appeal to his side, selfishly excluding other views.

I couldn’t understand his point of view, because it was in direct opposition to my own experiences. I haven’t seen any of his comments to others, but I understand they are inflammatory.

*cont* I am all for banning trolls; freethought has a specific purpose of creating a discussion which finds common ground and understanding. From what I understand, TF aggresively agreed with others, using accusatory language and being insulting when he did not object to anything the original poster said.

I’m all about protecting minority opinions, so long as they don’t trample on the rights of others. In any forum designed for discussion, it is important to kick out those who are hateful.

Finally the Atheist community starting to stand up to the extremist in their own movement!

When one openly proclaims political goals (as you obviously have) educated people everywhere understand that censorship of apposing opinions is a big red flag. PZ you removed him for not agreeing with you, THINKING human beings know that kind of reaction is simply not the actions of a reasonable man. I will be disappointed if your celebrity survives your behavior. PZ time to resign, you failed badly.

PZ Myers invited Thunderf00t to the blog, understanding the scope of his work. Did Thunderf00t make a dramatic change in his philosophy? No, so your example is nonsensical. Keep in mind that the whole issue has nothing to do with Atheism, it was over feminism issues!

PZ is trying to politicalize the Atheism movement and, that’s fine, so is Dawkins, but if PZ is going to run his political organization with an iron fist, that’s been done (Stalin) it went badly. I hope that PZ is soon irrelevant.

PZ addressed that in this video. He made it clear that issues such as basic respect towards all humans was one of the fundamental tenets of his blog. I agree that he was heavy-handed and ill-advised to boot thunderf00t so promptly, but having watched both of them in action, it’s clear that they are both mega-egos, who extend minimal courtesy to those whom they disagree with. I’m only surprised that thunderf00t would agree to go somewhere that he couldn’t be the primadonna. They’re both childish.

Anyone that claims absolute authority is (as demonstrated through their actions) absolutely certain. Censorship, political imprisonment, genocide, are all actions justified by the absolutely certain, who assert themselves as the absolute authority.

PZ is obviously willing to use censorship to enforce his brand of Atheism. By exercising absolute authority on another Atheist, PZ has elevated himself to a position of Lord. I’m glad to see Atheist calling him out on it! PZ, it’s time for you to go.

All you’re doing is trying to justify PZ actually being granted the absolute authority he has assumes he deserves.

There are 8 steps to a genocide, the last step is justification. Listen to the video, it’s all about trying to justify a stupid act. What you see as moderation is obviously asserting control and punishment. As I said, I’m glad to see Atheist being smart enough to call him out on this. It’s time for PZ Myers to simply go away, there is no room here for dictatorships.

But he DOES deserve it – it’s HIS forum – his kingdom if you like. Anyone who doesn’t like the rules is free to leave.

I agree, his overreaction was stupid, but in perfect proportion to his ego.

Your genocide comment is utterly irrelevant. I can’t even imagine what sane point you are making.

You seem to be arguing that people should not have the right to control their own kingdoms. That would be like me entering your house and saying I have the right to tell your daughter she should be raped.

7:00, or option 3, PZ, what he was saying was pushing your emotional buttons and since he wasn’t in total agreement with you on the topic, you lashed out against what you presumed his position should have been, rather than what it actually was (the “you’re either with us or against us” mentality). I, for instance, understood what thunderf00t meant in his blogpost on FTB and I have to agree with him: you strawmanned him and quite badly so.

I used to like you, but recently I am looking more to tf00t and I didn’t even like him to begin with. It was after your irrational response with all that twisting of his words that I understood you gather people around you who only agree with you. Maybe you squabble, but you squabble and then jerk each other off it seems. A hive mind is not in any way the way of the enlightenment, dissenters should be welcomed and argued with based on the scientific method, not whatever you call your way.

I started paying attention to this argument about a week ago. I have recently watched all videos and read all blogs regarding the matter. PZ your showing your irrationality in this. I started this as a non-partisan by standard. I’ve donated to FTB and Thunder. PZ. In regards to the feminism disagreement please drop it. Accept you were wrong in banning Thunder. Accept that Thunder expected FTB to be Free Thought. Not Hive mind.

Yeah, there’s nothing “free” about freethoughtblogs. You’re “free” to post things we agree with or we will get rid of you. How “inclusive” of them. Way to embrace “diversity”. They are so hopelessly hypocritical I fear they are beyond hope.

The essential principle of both the enlightenment and freethinking is, “I may not agree with what you have to say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” In other words dissent is not only OK, respect for it is essential. It’s too bad Myers doesn’t like his blog being criticized from within but if your answer to criticism is to reject and censor the critic then you’re are not a freethinker. You’re just another pretentious asshole.

Anyone interested in this matter should read the offending entries at Thunderfoot’s FTB. The caps and other stylistic crimes Myers bitches about are highlights used by TF to emphasize Myer’s mischaracterization of TF’s words. TF quotes Myer’s version against TF’s quotes of what TF actually said. That should reveal to you why Myer’s is bitching about style.

Myer’s claim that he had no opportunity to respond is bull. Everyone is allowed to post video responses on Youtube and, of course, there is nothing to stop Myers from responding on his own popular blog site. I do think that self-selected poll samples are inherently bogus, though.

so you ban people that slightly disagree with you pz? that dosn’t sounds like anything you desribed after gathering all the information I can on this, I would have to say FTB is not any kind of reputable organisation

“So we were lazy in vetting him for admission and didn’t look all that closely at whether his views were compatible with our goals. They are not. As we discovered too late.” – PZMyers.

Wow, count me out of your so called Freethought blog. I’ll be sure to avoid any blog post from this source as any message will have been edited under a microscope to agree with what PZ agrees with. And I don’t buy that the blog is about progressive socio-political views. That is malarkey mixed with gobbledygook.

Thunderf00t never said his poll reflects the views of atheists in general. And it is true that his poll was heavily biased by the fact he presented only his side of the argument, so it was expected that he wins in that poll.

However, here is the funny part: you presented your side of the argument here (also only one side of the coin), yet your video is more disliked than liked. The fact Thunderf00t won this poll, too tells much, much more than the poll on his video.

The most amusing thing about all this is that it’s almost as if folks think the blog is something important. It just comes across as an atheistic circle jerk. Think about it: if Thunderf00t was trolling, he at least got results.

oh come on..tfoot a “troll”? thunder disagrees with “equal treatment”?? he has poor writing skills and uses caps and italisized words, his data and evidence is poor etc. you apologize for “poor screening”? i think THUNDER GOT YOU on this one PZ. its ok it happens sometimes but just remember the enemy…it’s those DAMN CHRISTIANS and the MUZZIES!

PZ, I have been reading some of the feminists blogs on FTB’s. Basically, women are just whining about being victims which draws out certain people to pile on, feeding these women’s desire for attention and a cycle to whine some more. There are places where sexual harassment is an important concern, but your FTB women don’t make a case it’s a concern for them. Looks like “The movement” is simply your bowel movement.

You call Thunderf00t a troll as a means to justify your ends of kicking out someone you disagree with. Instances of sexual harassment doesn’t make it a significant issue seems to be all what Thunderf00t was saying, a point I’m inclined to agree unless shown otherwise.

If Thunderf00t endorsed sexual harassment, you may have an argument, but I don’t see that nor do you claim it. You’re arrogant and condescending toward Thunderf00t, but whatever it takes to rationalize breaking your promise.

You lie PZ. You say FTB pushes Enlightenment ideals – you don’t. You’re a bunch of dogmatic, group-think con-men. I can only hope people like Dawkins are getting as far from you as is humanely possible. You have zero credibility in the free-thought community – zero.

The fact you and your kin sat around discussing how to steal from TF says it all. Now shoo troll.

Understand that this is a scripted video in which a professional writer and scientist attempts to refute another person’s argument/explanation of what happened. I could likely come up with a better video than this extemporaneously.

Further, your story is utter bullshit. Thunderf00t has already released the emails stating that you granted him creative control to write whatever he wanted.

Thunderf00t was “trolling” FTB?? BASED ON WHAT. Speaking of evidence, PZ has given none. And then jumped to a wild conclusion. PZ, all your efforts at saving face are transparent, and only serve to make you look uptight and close minded. You have your big cause, and no one can question it because then they “need not apply” to join your group. No diversity of opinion on FTB I guess.

I’m so ashamed of you PZ, on this one issue. I guess there was no way of explaining to TF what you expected of him by way of Conformation to your particular mindset, you just threw a hissy and banned him. Others have asked for evidence of sexist emails and have been told to F off by yourself and Greta. I am a woman and do not suffer from sexism. I am not a victim. If sexism occurs, I stand up to it, no problem, don’t need big strong PZ to do it for me. How condescending can you be??

I have watched the whole video and I am familiar with this whole sad affair that is still going on, both sides are wrong to a degree, However PZ gets the thumbs down cause he caused all this by being a close minded tool and stifling debate instead of encouraging it. And he gets a personal thumbs down cause I think he is an overbearing, holier then thou, thuggish twit.

Sounds like you have a grudge and are a fanboy. Maybe there was no room for debate here, and he didn’t see TF as having a place on FTB. His description of what FreeThought means makes sense to me. I don’t see where you’re coming from with the personal attacks.

You seem to be assuming that only “academic feminism” is true feminism. You also seem to think that there is only one brand of “academic feminism”. Could you explain to us what is non-feminist about “a fair deal for women”? Could you give an example of any of PZ’s remarks which you consider to be “ad hominem”? Quite clearly, tf00t does not subscribe to the freethought philosophy. So, he doesn’t belong in a freethought community.

I clearly made the distinction between academic feminist theory and all of the nuanced views that might be defined as feminism. No assumption made or intended

Feminist theory is not about a fair deal for women – it is a social theory about power.

The video is ad-hominen because it ascribes motivations – such as “…clearly, TF’s only desire was to TROLL the free thought blogs”. It spends a lot of effort explaining what TF (according to PZ) doesn’t understand. Perhaps TF does understand.

You clearly counterposed feminism in general to “a fair deal for women” – which is an integral part of any type of feminism. You then replaced feminism in general with “academic feminism”, clearly conflating the two in supposed opposition to “a fair deal for women”. Women’s studies course in universities discuss a wide variety of feminist theories. It is not a single entity.

How can “a fair deal for women” be implemented if women don’t attain the power to enact this deal?

From PZ’s description of tf00t’s actual behaviour, it sounds as though tf00t’s behaviour fits this definition of trolling. Some definitions at Urban Dictionary make a distinction between trolling and flaming, which sounds more like what tf00t was doing. In either case, calling some one a troll is not ad hominem if what they are doing is disruptive to the forum

Yeah, Feminism’s a load of rubbish. How dare women want to be treated as equals? Don’t they understand that their rights are ours to give and take as we please? It’s almost like they think they’re human or something.

Seriously, though, your post is absurd. I assume you think race equality and gay rights are “not reasonable” as well? If not, what do you believe the difference is?

I believe in those things that you mention but that is NOT what theoretical Feminism is about. It is a social theory about the causes of injusttice and inequality – and it IS garbage. If Feminism were defined in terms of equal rights for women then count me a Feminist.

That’s exactly what feminism is. The very dictionary definition of feminism is about gender equality. Now if you disagree with certain feminists’ points of view about how gender inequality occurs and what should be done about it, then that’s fine. But in this case it looks like your argument is not with the core ideals of feminism, it’s with the implementation of those ideals. It’s a subtle distinction, but an important one to make.

Sorry, I cannot agree. Dictionary definitions don’t cut it. Feminism is what it is, not what the dictionary says. Academic Feminism is defined by the absurd notions it promulgates, and the aggressive, irrational and nonconstructive behaviour of its supporters.

Please can you point out the strawman? Let me reiterate the point of my comment a bit more clearly and without the sarcasm.

garethb1961 said Feminism is not reasonable. According to the Oxford dictionary Feminism is “the belief that women should hold the same rights and status as men”. Therefore, by saying that feminism is not reasonable, gareth1961 is saying either that he believes women should be treated equal to men or that he is unaware of the definition of feminism.

Is “supporting the equality of women” the same as feminism? “Feminism is a collection of movements and ideologies aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights for women.In addition, feminism seeks to establish equal opportunities for women in education and employment.” Ooook going by that definition you are strawmanning Feminism and I can only assume unthinking Tfoot mooks are what thumbed up your comment.

Or perhaps some “dictionary definition’ of Feminism you’ve plucked from God knows where does not describe the actual thing itself.

Apparently a lot of TF mooks are pissed off with Feminism also. But I only speak for myself – Feminism is shit, a completely bogus pseudo-academic field that does not do any of things described by your definition.

Well thats opinion and Feminism is a concept that gets pulled around to mean whatever the person at the time wants it to mean. The problem here you are generalizing which is no different to what the ignorant and the fundies do to atheists. I’m pretty sure Tfoot said that the one of the marks of a civilized culture is gender equality and your generalizations here do nothing to provide a good argument.

Of course it’s opinion, as expressed here with a 500 character limit.. Shall we address out the tenets of Feminism (as it is taught and discussed in academia) one by one? Then I will describe in great length, with cogent arguments, why it is complete shit.

But I think you are just binding to a position here because it makes you appear to be the civilised man in support gender equality. I also support gender equality, but no rational person could support Feminism if they read it.

Reply 1: Your statement is factually true, though if extended it makes a de facto atheist nation.

Reply 2: All you have demonstrated is merely a correlation, not a causation. Coming up with a counter (i.e. USA, which you reject) was not really needed, since you have yet to actually demonstrate that your original premise, “Atheism was the causative factor in the [InsertScary CommunistState] brutality” was in fact true.

Horrible events one and all. However, the equivocation breaks when you take into account the fact that these acts were not perpetrated _because_ of the inherit atheism of the regime. These people were straight-up evil. Their evil came from a fanatical belief in collectivism and the desire to destroy anyone who stood up to them. Somewhat like a religion in that regard.

And while you are enumerating “atheist regimes” you forgot to include the United States of America in that list.

I can’t understand ppl who think anything goes. IRL you can’t do whatever you want. Neither can you do whatever you want on the net. There are RULEZ. FtB is feminist friendly. FtB doesn’t want misogynist twits on there. Enter Thundermisogyny. Big kick in the ass. All peace is restored,,, um until Thundertwit drops PM’s.

Part 3: your point bout free thought not being free speech was fair but in fact thunderf00t, like him or hate him, is all about rationality, liberty and freedom. His first video was about iraq, he was complaining about the murder of muslim civilians by soldiers. He is not a racist but certainly has issues with religion. He is very much a product of the enlightment

Part 2: i do not do one night stands. However, i dont think either part is sexualizing the other when they happen. I respect rebeccas right not to do or to wannt to do them either. I do think, the propsition in question, would be rejected by most women. I disagree with thundrfoots caracterization of her. I dont think she is “crzy”. I just think she was harsh on her elevator man. Again, she is right to complain about ppl glorifying rape or considring it sex. For the victim, rape is violence.

I dont always agree with thunderfoot but your video misrepresents what his post actually said, As for “values” he merely suggested that sexism in conferences was not the biggest problem. I sympathize with rebeccas sufffering through “rape threats”; i know thunderf00t and others have had death threats. Nobody desrves rape and violent crimees do not “losen” people up. I do disagree with her elevator gate. If somebody asks politely and backs off after a rejection, that is not harassment.

Indeed… Contrast that with when reglious sects have infighting: you get pogroms, heretics burned at the stake, laws against Quakers, Mormons, people blowing themselves up in a Sunni mosque because they are Shia, Ultra-Orthodox Jews spitting on children walking to school…

You go ahead and mock us for our arguments, but no religious person has a moral leg to stand on when it comes to schisms.

Anyone who thinks he needs to dictate what free thought means is automatically a bell-end. The clue’s in the title. It shouldn’t need to be explained. I was under the impression being part of a group mentality was something of a contradiction and detrimental to the ultimate goal…A bit like feeling the need to tell men not to harass women. If you need to be told then you’re a twat…. Telling everyone as a policy is to assume everyone around you is a twat.

I read the relevant blogs. You and others actually were guilty of extensive strawmanning.

“Either…such a poor writer that he was completely incapable of communicating what he meant or…such a sloppy thinker that he was getting angry with us on issues that he completely agreed with us.”

This is a false dichotomy if I’ve ever see one and a prime example of “sloppy” thinking. Ever consider that the fault might be with you? You show ever indication of willfully misinterpreting his arguments.

False dichotomy? Ok… explain to me how PZ was using that statement as an argument.

Seems to me he’s just saying these are the only two things he can take from Tf00t’s blog, if he’s not using it as an argument then it is not “false dichotomy”.

As for the straw-man, how about actually providing an example? If you look at 7:30you can see PZ doing just that, making an accusation and then backing it up. Let’s see you do the same, show an example of “willfully misinterpreting his arguments”.

Saying a statement is a false dichotomy doesn’t mean it is in itself an argument. A false dichotomy is simply presenting two alternatives, an either/or proposition, as if they are exhaustive when they aren’t. He refused to address even the possibility that the responders to TFs arguments, himself included, simply failed in reading/critical thinking regarding the nature of the arguments being made. As to examples of strawmen, TF actually points them out clearly in his subsequent posts.

No that’s a crock of shit, if you’re not making an argument then you can’t commit logical fallacy. That’s like calling an insult an ad hom.

Typical for Tf00t’s followers to not comprehend such a simple concept. And I didn’t ask Tf00t… I asked YOU to point out PZ’s straw-man. Sheesh… and you wonder why people call you guys Thunderdrones >_>

I said, “A false dichotomy is simply presenting two alternatives, an either/or proposition, as if they are exhaustive when they aren’t.” True or false? You don’t need to say which option you prefer for such to be a false dichotomy. In this case, both serve PZ’s intended purpose of discrediting TF.

OK, but that’s the issue he was using to try to belittle me in the comment you were responding to. Did you just think, “Oh, someone agrees with TF and is under attack – I’ll throw a stone too?” He was specifically criticizing me for (supposedly) misusing the term “false dichotomy.” If that was not an issue, why call me a “follower” and dismiss me as incapable of “a well thought out argument?” How could you interpret your weighing in that way as anything but agreement with his criticism? Yesh.

For him to have made a “false dichotomy” in this context he would have to be lying, and it really doesn’t matter because he wasn’t making an argument and your patronizing copy and paste style definition doesn’t change that.

And, still… no example of a straw-man?!? I thought they were “extensive”?

You are a drone, and a follower. I ask you to make one example and you say to ask Tf00t and you STILL don’t even give the ex. that he supposedly has.

A false dichotomy doesn’t have to be intentionally dishonest. He simply showed he wasn’t willing to give serious consideration to any possibilities except those that would cast him in the right.

I didn’t do any copy and pasting. I wonder what you background in logic is. I’m sorry, but I can tell you it is something I have actually studied formally. I’m not making a mistake on what a false dichotomy is, sorry to tell you, but you are. Not sure if you noticed the illustration I made below.

So, you’ve called me a “clown,” as well as “follower” and a “drone” (for taking TF’s part in this). You’ve been summarily dismissive, and much of this has been predicated on my supposed misuse of “false dichotomy” which was actually your own lack of understanding of the term. Can you dispute that? Question: do you now understand a false dichotomy to be an argument or a proposition? If you still need me to clarify this for you, I can.

A background in logic means having devoted a significant amount of study to logic, especially in a formal setting such as college. To me, it seems as though you only have a passing familiarity with logical fallacies and you’ve chosen to launch a sniping attack on me on that basis when I absolutely know what I’m referring to. Granted I don’t have a degree in philosophy but I have taken several classes on formal logic and philosophy. In other words, I think I know what a false dichotomy is…

I was the one that wondered what YOUR background was. Honestly, you still think that a proposition can’t be a false dichotomy? Whatever. I suppose we can agree that neither of us cares what the other thinks at this point. I feel satisfied that I’ve defended my original statement from your misguided, sniping attack, though, and you’ve made yourself look silly with your insults, so at this point I’ll just say, Have a nice life.

“Honestly, you still think that a proposition can’t be a false dichotomy?”

I never said that, I would ask you to point out where I did but I know you won’t.

And he never made a “false proposition” you don’t “propose” your opinion you moron.

The point is that he’s not using it as his argument, it not a “false dichotomy, and really it’s a “petty attack” when you’re claiming that because he didn’t “get what Tf00t meant” it somehow means he’s a lazy thinker.

I wasn’t planning to respond, but I just thought this was funny: You don’t know the meaning of “proposition” in logic. It is a statement that can be said to have a truth value. An argument consists of propositions and a conclusion. A dichotomy is a statement that there are a two alternatives that are exhaustive (meaning they are the only possibilities) and mutually exclusive. If a so-called dichotomy has more than two possibilities, it is a false dichotomy. There, you learned something.

Have you even bothered to read the blog or watch he videos of TF’s defense of his blogs? Why should I have to rehash here (in limited comments section) what I endorse from there (a series of full videos or blog posts)? I am absolutely not a drone or follower of TF. In fact, I hadn’t watched a video of his or read his blog prior to a couple of weeks ago for years. Try again.

So not only am I a drone of TF, I’m the biggest one ever? Do you actually expect me to take you seriously? Now, if you insist on maintaining that a false dichotomy is an argument, that it is NOT and can’t be a proposition then I’d counsel you to better educate yourself on the matter. You tried to snipe me by attacking me over something you didn’t even understand and any impartial observer can see the truth of that if they care to. So, I’m just not concerned with what you think at this point.

Stop trying to split hairs. The implication of PZ’s statement that TF must be either a sloppy thinker or a poor writer is that IF he is an effective writer, he must be a sloppy thinker or if he is a disciplined thinker, he must be a poor writer. Either suits PZ’s purpose of discrediting TF. He doesn’t complete an argument, but he is still presenting a false dichotomy in the statement on which those arguments would be built. Calling me a drone is neither mature nor conducive to reasoned dialogue.

This argument is valid in its form but it can still commit a fallacy of presumption. If a third alternative exists, C, then P1 is a false dichotomy. The ARGUMENT is not a false dichotomy, only the statement P1 is. The argument commits the FALLACY OF false dichotomy. Even if you don’t go to the trouble of presenting P2 to argue for C, P1 remains a false dichotomy. Hope that helps clear up the terminology for you, Douglas!

Very poorly made statement. At least it does recognise the errors made by ftb but meets it by discussing definitions and stating that tf shouldn’t have been let in from the start. Followed by some casual, sloppy misrepresentation of tf’s actual standpoint. Oh, and not a single word about PZ’s personal reassurance about freedom to blog whatever he wanted.

What’s hilarious is that Thunderfoot put BOTH feet in his mouth and acted like his pal Kevin with the misogynist babbling. I see all these men blaming Rebecca and not ONCE try to understand how fearful and uncomfortable it can be to be approached by a stranger at 4am wanting you to come back to his room and asking her while she’s in a small space. People just blame her. They are also misogynists too.

Yeah – and repeating the lie that ANYONE is calling what EG did a “crime” is annoying. The only person I have heard say such a thing is “Desertphile” on a FtB comment – who is a satirist. Those who have discussed it seriously have NOT made that claim. RW said EG was not “socially awkward” was well, but that’s beside the point. Quit arguing against stuff nobody is saying. Of course it wasn’t a crime – nor was it harassment – nobody has said otherwise. It was uncomfortable and not ideal.

I personally think making it public was unnecessary…. If some lonely or desperate individual comes on to you, in a socially awkward manner, do you deal with it and let it go…. Or do you tell everyone about it humiliating the person involved and making an issue out something you probably should have kept to yourself?…. I have about 10 of these moments a day….Let it go. It’s part of being an adult.

Who freaking cares if it makes her uncomfortable. Her comfort should not be the entire focus of the skeptic community. This whole affair sounds like some spoiled child whining about not having the world conform to her child like needs for constant coddling and accommodation. She and her supporters need to grow up and recognize that adults can manage a request for coffee without going on youtube to tell all men on earth how to hit on a women the way she prefers.

Free Speech is essential for Freethought. Dissent is needed for progress, either to change the trajectory of the movement or to correct, admonish and/or educate the offending individual. Expulsion, shunning, and IN YOUR OWN WORDS…the destruction of another person is not Free thought.

It wasn’t his style of argumentation that got his ostracised PZ, that was why you love his Creationist debunking videos. It was simply what he said on a topic you are well versed (more so than him) and sided in. Apology accepted.

Your maturity shows when you call women defending a right to be included online “a harem of women who couldn’t get a date in high school.” My anti-male prejudice? I was calling you out on your blatant sexism. Sure, sure, belittle the problem and the people involved by calling us puritans instead of actually making a point. It’s not my anti-male prejudice. Males like you are blind to the hatred and continued oppression of women. Your first comment is an excellent example of your anti-female view.

These unfounded claims of sexism from a obviously sexist feminist are comical. Playing victim comes at a price, you do it to long and without just cause and nobody takes you seriously.

People like you and your sickening sanctimonious shaming tactics are not going to shut these men up. They have decided their self respect matters a whole lot more than your approval. You better get used to it because it’s only going to get worse for people like you.

You never offered evidence or reasoning to refute my claims. You only tear me down as a person, which does not help the discussion and is what has some females in the skeptical movement rightfully up in arms (saying I’m playing the victim is absurd).

You are speaking as one who has privilege. I am glad men finally decided their self respect matters more than ideals of the other half of the population. Oh wait, that’s how it has been for ALL OF RECORDED HISTORY, save for a few nomadic tribes.

i like PZ’s side of the story. Thunderf00t calls himself a rationalist, yet he applies his rationality only to race and religion. however his reaction on this matter comes close to insanity. Getting his YT followers to support his views, asking his YT followers to attack PZ’s messagebox with hatemail, crying about how he can’t trust in PZ’s scientific studies anymore. All that in just a few days after the firing incident, doesn’t sound very rational to me.

Don’t forget re-entering their listserve, sharing private e-mails, and insinuating that FtB was trying to get someone fired with the strongest “evidence” being ZJ asking if there was any reason she shouldn’t answer the his criticism by mentioning that there are almost 40 writers on FtB and that they shouldn’t be lumped together and mentioning statements and phone calls made by who-knows-who.

Exactly! Most of his appeals are to emotions. His silly poll posted on his channel (along with his defense that it has any validity at all) shows he clearly doesn’t understand the very fundamentals of science. And like you said, look at what his followers are doing at his urging.

He isn’t helping to bring both sides of the discussion to any sort of consensus, but driving them further apart. I don’t understand his motives, except they must be selfish b/c there is no logic in his arguments.

Yeah, I watched his video where he explains it, and I’m thinking you don’t understand the basics of science either (specifically collecting sample data that accurately reflects the population by minimizing bias).

His poll was no more valid than any worthless poll of Fox News. I wonder if Fox News draws specific demographics to its programming? I wonder who sees (not to mention responds to) the poll posted in Fox’s programming and website? Convenience sampling is lazy and highly, highly biased.

The poll is not OK to say anything, because it is extremely biased. Not only was it a convenience sample (only those who stumble their way onto TF’s channel even knew the poll existed) and only those who felt compelled to answer actually were surveyed.

It’s such an invalid poll that it’s laughable that anyone would try to say anything outside of, “People who like tf like tf.” The only conclusion is trivial. The sample does not measure the population at large, but only those on TF’s channel.

I think that TF’s statistical critique of his own survey is a little better than yours. I am not going to argue with you, because it has already been done by the man himself. What you have posted here is a disgraceful misrepresentation of it.

When did TF ask anyone to attack PZ’s message box with hatemail? He never did anything of the sort. When did he ask his YT followers to “support his views”? He never asked anyone to support his views. He made his case and put it to a poll to gauge reaction.

Doesn’t understand the fundamentals of science? No logic in his arguments?

Well ill tell you what my enlightenment is. Its that women arent delicate egg shells to be treated like fine china in the fear they may break. Sure theres some differences. And we should respect them. But just as i respect my male friends differences, i expect them not to get any unreasonable special treatment.

I’m not gonna lie. This movement is basically on a crash course to fall apart. Thank goodness I’ve only half paid attention to anything going on here. Firstly, PZ? You and the movement are turning into a bowel movement, especially given some of the sexist, disgusting stuff on FTB. Men Hate Women’s Body? Are you fucking serious? Taslima gets a free pass spouting that kind of childish nonsense that offends anyone with a set of testies.

What you claimed he had said was not what he had written. He showed what he had written and what you had written.

Mega superuber straw man?(child wrote that for you?) It wasnt a straw man, he was just making a point about how people who run an event have no right to try and control people who are not even at the event. (so that means the Mega super-uber straw man comment is a straw man:)

Also typed that title into a search on FTB, it didn’t come up. Even if there are anti-male posts on FTB, it’s probably from established posters. You don’t wear a stained wife-beater t-shirt to your first day on the job, do you?

Are you somehow suggesting that PZ is responsible for Taslima? How do you think that fucking works? If anything, her blog is a good example about how those on FtB don’t always agree on stuff. Her writing isn’t always that great, probably due to growing up in a non-English speaking country. She has quite a bit of credibility because of her work and she has an interesting perspective. She’s also not a complete ass to everyone and can usually take criticism in stride – that sort of helps.

Sorry – I guess it’s ridiculous to point out that Taslima is not under the control of PZ, FtB is a group of about 40 writers, or that the main reason that TF was kicked out (beyond being a bad writer) is that he was difficult to deal with – which seems likely since he is so obsessed with FtB that he re-entered their private e-mail listserve right after he was kicked out.

Yeah, a few writer’s writing isn’t that great. It’s the one-two punch of the writing sucking and the writer being difficult to deal with that caused him to be kicked out. Carrier wrote a post on how to write about the subject without looking, well “embarrassingly clueless” and Carrier and even PZ have voiced disagreement with wording in harassment policies, etc. TF just attacked, and he didn’t attack well. Being an ass and a bad writer, or just a really big ass is going to get you off FtB.

I have been following Carrier for quite some time. I would even claim that I am quite “intimately” acquainted with his philosophy and theories in history studies.

The treatment of this “issue” was one of the weakest I have ever seen from him. For example some key sources he was referencing were “90%” about harassment at the workplace and not at conferences. Those two are by far not analogous. Making “purely logical/deductive steps” won’t be that easily applicable there.

By far not analogous? – cause there is such a large body of well-designed studies concerning sexual harassment at conferences. So, what are you basing your opinions on? Arguments from ignorance? Not that it matters, my point in mentioning him is that TF’s IDEAS were engaged on FtB when he was there, as well as his writing. HE (the guy) was dismissed from the network, but that doesn’t equate to his ideas being dismissed out of hand or silenced.

Sorry I assumed you were trying to make some of the points that others have actually made by chiming in with “Look Talisma wrote something!!! Shame on you PZ” – or whatever the hell that was. So, you are basing your opinions on our “ignorance” (not yet defined) – yeah, that’s sort of the definition of an argument from ignorance.

Yes, his ideas were engaged, including a FOUR part point-by-point from Great Christina, a post explaining polling biases by Zinnia Jones, advice on discussing the subject from Carrier, and access to a summary of the discussions on the subject up till now including a series of links – and that’s just what I noticed other than what PZ wrote. Perhaps you’re under the impression that FtB = PZ?

PZ responded to TF for a while, but by and large (at least on the blogs) they have been stating that they were done responding. Until recently when they found out he had re-entered their listserve they weren’t generally writing about him. A few have mentioned that they have tried to talk to him personally. Matt Dilahunty become so frustrated with him that he blocked TF on twitter and at this point few people want anything to do with him. They’ll be talking through lawyers at this point.

I did sift through “all” available online material related to this matter. Obviously TF has not been playing the nice guy’s game. However, the sheer ignorance demonstrated on PZ’s part, just as it is seen in this video, is unworthy of an academic and maybe even more so of a person who claims to be advancing freethought. But then again, we learned directly from PZ what he and perhaps FtB understand under “freethought.”

Ignorance of what exactly? He’s a humanist. Even if this was about a difference of opinion, how does: “We can’t work with this guy and we don’t like his writing so we are kicking him off our blog network” equate to being against Freethought or censorship or whatever else? TF is not being silenced, if anything this issue is giving him a larger stage. The listserve thing is the end of it though, nobody wants to talk to him and that is squarely because of his behavior – that’s on him.

No, cause I can’t read your damn mind. “He is showing ignorance and that ignorance is very large…blah blah blah” is not telling me anything what-so-ever. I know, “It’s self evident and you’re stupid if you don’t get it” is a much easier thing to do than actually trying to articulate a point.

You may have a point, but your childish name-calling cancels it out. Your commentary is most unintelligent and far less enjoyable than PZ Myers’, other men’s, and the women for whom they are advocating’s dialogue on the very real issue of sexism. How typical of (what I’m assuming is your male perspective) to bash another human’s natural social desire to feel welcomed and respected by a community.

OMG, I get it. Your comment is satirically sexist. You’re a troll! …are you thunderfoot??

I meant he might have a point inside his brain, but he fails to make it here. He resorts to name calling instead of providing reasoning and rational for his opinion, which I understand is the misunderstanding in this whole ftb and tf debate. People like PZ Myers are promoting a healthy community of like minded people, like-minded in that the rely on reasoning and evidence to inform opinions and beliefs. Name calling is hurtful and unproductive.

You don’t have a real issue of sexism unless you count how men are being mistreated by the feminist in the skeptic movement.

“How typical of (what I’m assuming is your male perspective) to bash another human’s natural social desire to feel welcomed and respected by a community.”

Referring to a person by gender then calling their behavior typical of that gender is clearly sexist. This is the kind of sexism skeptics should be concerned instead of the hypocrites making false claims.

Actually, I didnt know that FTB had some core ideals that had to be shared across blogs. This is news to me. I do not think free thinking means being chained to ANY ideals, so I think the title of the site is a tad misleading.

No, it’s 30 blogs – but yes, it isn’t public property which means that perhaps people should stop complaining that they don’t do what they want them to do. If you don’t like FtB, there is very littler stopping you or anyone else from starting your own blog network.

Your side of the story as of now has 825 in favor, 988 opposed, you lose on your own site. The motion to declare PZ Myers a feminist troll is passed! Please leave the atheist community. You belong in a feminist community as an atheist auxiliary more than you belong in an atheist community as a feminist auxiliary.

Try actually being honest. It was PZ Myers who criticized thunderf00t for using his own channel for a poll, despite believing his self moderated website is a perfectly good example of the wider atheist community, and now on his own channel, he sees that without censorship, he is the one who clearly acted like a fool. Trying to backpedal isn’t going to save him. Sorry, but FTB is a total group-think circle jerk. It is a loony fringe of the atheist community, devoid of intellectual merit.

Who said anyone thought FtB was a typical of the “greater atheist community” in some sort of randomized sample sense? Nobody. Which is another reason TF’s “argument” didn’t make any damned sense. His argument: you aren’t “representative” therefore you are wrong = ad populum fallacy.

I remember when I thought highly of Thunderf00t(Sad I know), it always rubbed me the wrong way when you saw him write in his video’s, and later when I saw his twitter messages, he would write like a 15 yo teenager with tons of smileyes and just a wierd style overall. It was obvious when he had “conquered” VenomfangX that he wasn’t that great a guy, he didn’t do his research on the people he was trying to debate, he made himself look like a complete ass when he went after Coughlan.

No one said to PZ Meyers that he must support thunderfoot. if PZ has determined supporting a view point mean something as simply having a blogger on FtB, then he has asserted he agrees with everyone on FtB. IMPOSSIBLE!

Progressive socio-political views? who defines that? If you have a specific political agenda on FTB that can’t be challenged by it’s members change the name of the site, it’s not free thought.

The enlightenment ideals expand from the adoption of reason, nothing more. I don’t see why anyone who is in support of universality should have to advocate a RW brand of feminism with all it’s baggage. If you used those flyers at any con you’d be showing an insultingly low regard for the attendees.

If you wanted to cast your side of the argument as respectful disagreement, then you shouldn’t have used the childish and offensive nickname “Twatson”. That kind of thing is exactly why Thunderf00t and his supporters are not a good fit for FreeThought blogs.

I sure as hell would never waste my time with these so-called “rationalists” “enlightenments” and registering with freethoughtsblogs, because as much as I am an atheist and progressive and radical, I am also a nihilist and do NOT equate “reason” with this bullshit “maintain the status quo” or “use only nonviolence” garbage. These so-called self-proclaimed “rationalists” have NO, NO idea what real hardcore formal mathematical and logistical modeling means, which IS what “being logical” means.

Obviously you can ban who you want from FTB but you can hardly claim to support free thinking if you cannot accept other views. How is conducting a poll somehow disturbing? As to why did he accept the offer to join you, maybe a better question is why did you offer him a place at FTB?

‘Free thinking’ on harassment has been reduced to agreeing with you or being banned.

Guess you didn’t see the video did you? Should they have creationists on as well? Afterall they are just expressing their opinion. Thunderf00t was acting like a child, writing like a child, and being extremely hyper sensitive to criticism, and projecting what he did onto everybody else(Strawman’s etc.)

I did see this video, several blogs and other video’s too, and the evidence does not support that Thunderf00t was the only one at fault. He was a known quantity before being asked to write at FTB, he did not suddenly change overnight, so if he is so unacceptable it can only raise a question over the judgement of the person who recruited him in the first place. His writing style was not perfect, but that does not mean the content should be dismissed, and he was not the worst example at FTB.

We can only wait and see, but if the complaints about Thunderf00t’s writing style have any validity there should be at least a couple of others exiting FTB soon. I certainly do not think Thunderf00t is without faults, but this decision has proved a costly own goal at best for PZ.

Atheism should not be dominated by feminist discussion or be one where everyone is expected to conform to a single view on all issues. Some people are using a secondary issue to promote their own agendas.

From this vid – they are saying it was both writing and not being able to get along. I know some of the writing at FtB isn’t so good. “Dominated by feminist discussion” – you mean like TFs?! Because he wrote about NOTHING else.

As I said, I am not defending Thunderf00t, or for that matter even saying he was behaving well in this incident or in the fallout over it. However, he is not responsible for PZ asking him to FTB in the first place, and presumably PZ somehow missed that Thunderf00t can be a pedantic and obnoxious ass at times. Serious, the guy has been online for a decade, acted much the same in that time, and PZ was somehow unaware how he acted? The key part as PZ says in his video is that the common cause –

that everyone has in common is atheism. It is not, and should not have to be the same view on feminism. As I said in my first post here, PZ can ban whoever he wishes on his own sight, but it diminishes the claim to ‘free thinking’ when it is done because somebody has divergent views.

Should Thunderf00t have acted differently, yes. Should PZ have acted differently, yes.

There is one figure rapidly polarizing the Atheist movement, and their issue is not even one about Atheism itself. That is sad.

PZ has the authority to ban as he sees fit with a unilateral decision. Effectively that places him as the person controlling the site, with abilities to act above and beyond the abilities other contributors are capable of. I believe you would be correct in saying he does not own the site, though I too cannot remember who might do.

I did watch it, I also read the relevant blogs and other related vids too. The issues are not being dealt with, they are hedged around. Notably the writing style claim. If Thunderf00t was so bad there are a few others who are far worse at FTB yet they have yet to be banned. Why?

Look at the body of evidence on this subject and related matters, you will see a theme, and it is not Thunderf00t, it is how people are not allowed to disagree with certain views and more notably a certain person.

Is there a point? You would have to pick exactly the same arguments with the same contributors to make it valid in any way, and nobody needs a repeat performance. This entire episode has been divisive enough without conducting such a test.

My own view with regards to conferences, blogs, comments, & any dealings with others is that you should treat everyone with respect & decency and have a right to expect such courtesy in return.

You sated that if some disagreed with “someone” on certain topics on FtB that they get banned. So – I said that I could go on FtB and disagree with someone about that “certain topic” and see if I get banned – you said, what’s the point for the test because you’d have to make the same ARGUMENTS? Arguments aren’t the same as disagreements. Such a test would not be the least bit divisive because disagreeing with people doesn’t get you banned from FtB – what’s divisive is this type of slander.

Semantics. Arguments/disagreements. Go pick the same subject as the original disagreement, arrange pre-posting objections to your presence too to match the environment TF had so people there clearly object to your presence even before you have posted a single word.

Your brand of dishonesty is what is divisive, unless you are too stupid to comprehend simple facts of a complex subject. My guess is that you would lack the balls to pick any real disagreement anyhow, but instead bleat a party line.

I’m asking you to pick the thing I disagree about. No, we know what happens when TF is invited to FtB – that didn’t work out so well for many reasons. However, you are pointing to his disagreement (his actual stance on something) not his arguments (which refers to HOW to try to make your point, not what your point is), as well as being difficult to work with. You’re making a positive claim that FtB is lying (not just PZ) and saying that disagreeing gets you banned. So, we can test that.

I fail to see why I should encourage you to troll another site, you already manage that here it seems, as well as having an apparent inability to see that further pointless disagreements at this time are serving no purpose. I sincerely doubt you are able to put up a good case for something you yourself do not agree with, you struggle here on your own chosen issue.

Troll FTB with pointless further manufactured disagreement if you wish, but I will have no part in it.

Suppose somebody was invited to join FTB because they had made videos that effectively exposed anti-vaxxers, then immediately wrote a series of blog posts advancing Catholic dogma and arguing that homosexuality is sinful. Would it be a violation of the principles of free thinking to not accept their views?

That was not the case though. Thundef00t’s posts did nothing to suggest anything but that he viewed everyone was equal & deserved equal respect. Because he did not subscribe to the self-promotion of Rebecca Watson and her brand of feminism – which has little to do with equality and a lot to do with attention and power – was not a reason to ban him. The excuses in the video do not address that. PZ uses the words ‘we decided…’ yet it is clear the decision was made by him in isolation. Dishonest.

Yet none were involved in the decision to ban him by PZ and Thunderf00t’s own versions of events. This was a unilateral decision & there is little reason to pretend it was otherwise. The short timescale involved indicate that finding somebody impossible to deal with is unlikely, some bloggers do not even visit daily. Many had decided to take exception even before he posted, by PZ’s admission too. I was never aware there was a compulsory line on feminism that must be adhered to at FTB.

The point is that freethoughtblogs is an organized group of bloggers working together to advance a particular philosophical, political, and ethical perspective. That perspective includes feminism, which Thunderf00t’s posts clashed with. He therefore had no reason to be blogging there.

How is asking for a harassment policy or asking to not be propositioned in an elevator a means of attaining attention and power?

As I noted PZ can do as he likes with FTB, but it lessens its credibility when a dissenting voice on a side issue has to be silenced by banishment. There has never been a group statement at FTB that feminism is a must, so presumably until now that was not the case.

I agree there should be no harassment, though making a statement will not change it happening in itself. However, we should maybe be shown proof that some harassment has actually taken place, So far all we have is verbal claims.

A side-issue? I’m afraid not. Feminism is an integral part of humanism, because it aims to correct one of the greatest harms that religion has caused, namely the systematic oppression of women. Whence my earlier comparison of Thunderf00t’s position with Catholic doctrine.

Do you think that people are lying about being harassed at conferences? Why would they do that? And how would a policy designed to address such claims not clarify the situation?

The main issue linking all is Atheism, all the other aspects are side issues not part of the main one. Not believing in God does not mean every one must embrace feminism. Certainly wrongs were done, and still are, but not all happen in the name of a God.

As to lies about harassment, it has been known hasnt it, I said nothing about a policy at all, though writing down ‘please do not do X’ will not deter those who actually intend to do X. Best policy is treat all with respect.

Sorry, but you don’t get to dictate FTB’s priorities to them. They have chosen an approach that integrates atheism with humanism at a foundational level, and that entails a commitment to feminism. If you and Thunderf00t want to be dictionary atheists, then that is your prerogative, but you should look for other outlets for your ideas.

A harassment policy is not just about saying “please do not do X”. It also prescribes a plan of action, which includes consequences, for when X happens.

“Sorry, but you don’t get to dictate FTB’s priorities to them.” – What part of my initial sentence here – “Obviously you can ban who you want from FTB” did you fail to understand?

As to harassment ‘rules’ how do you propose to cope with an incident such as Elevatorgate? A girl says a guy did something that offended her. No other witnesses, no evidence, just her word vs his. Then what? Ever heard of malicious accusation?

Nobody has ever said that RW experience with EG was harassment or has anything to do at all with harassment policies. RW just said it was uncomfortable – that’s it. Just saying that you don’t like something is not a call for legislation or even anyone doing anything about it. Nobody is saying harassment policies will solve all problems. You’re just conflating a bunch of stuff that doesn’t have anything to do with one another.

My point is that one individual comes out of an elevator claiming the other person in there has harassed them. Then what? Who do you believe in the situation outlined?

My guess is that you do see the problem in such a scenario, that is why you are now trying to shift what I said to a specific named individual & not what I outlined which was a purely random event in similar circumstances.

It would appear your position is now one to be getting close to trolling as you lack an defensible position.

If someone comes out of an elevator and says they have been harassed? You document the situation (to see patterns of harassment or accusations). You give emotional support (you don’t assume either lying or not lying). You tell the two people to avoid one another (when possible). If either one wants added security you provide it (within reason). You don’t kick anyone out or make the incident public through official channels, but you don’t put restrains on what anyone involved says either.

Providing one party with security effectively means you are taking sides in the claim though, thereby losing impartiality. By taking no action you risk alienating the offended party who will point to the policy and say you have undertaken to protect them. By taking action without evidence you will see some people make complaints or threaten to for a variety of reasons from personal enmity to purely malicious attention seeking. It is far from easy to deal with and why the police have trouble too.

Who said that added security was going to be provided only to one side? I think you’re just sort of assuming that we’re all sexist and that no harassment policy has ever been enforced ever at a conference and nobody knows how to actually deal with this sort of thing. It sounds like you had a bad experience at work – quit projecting it. Also, you are wrong about policies not dissuading bad behavior – just articulating social expectations can be helpful.

So you propose to guard the person accused, presumably they have the right to be safeguarded against further allegations if untrue, plus the original possible victim. One guard per guest will make a great conference. Why not make everyone stay home and just watch online, that way everyone must remain safe!

Maybe you need to consider why the police and professional security people think this area is a real minefield and difficult to deal with before you suggest simplistic and unworkable solutions

That wasn’t completely fair – how about this – of course I (and a many others) understand the realities of harassment policies and just because we might think it’s a good idea doesn’t mean we don’t. Heck you seem to share that opinion – and doesn’t it seem like a good idea to figure out WHAT, if anything, to do before it happens? Talk about these possibilities? It wasn’t that TF disagreed. He didn’t bother figuring out what people were actually saying before attacking. That was “clueless”.

I did not and will not defend Thunderf00t, I have even noted here or elsewhere he can be a complete prick.

I did not even start the comments about harassment policy. Yes it is sensible to have a policy. It is bloody difficult to get it right. It does make sense to talk about it. It does not make sense to simply believe all claims, nor to always give the benefit of the doubt to a female. You need experienced security people to deal with this, and that might be more than a conference can afford.

Nope – you didn’t defend him you just got over 40 likes for assuming that he could not have possibly been so difficult to deal with that he was kicked off for being a bad writer and a jerk; and therefore all the people who made the decision to stop working directly with him “can hardly claim to support free thinking” because they don’t accept his views (wtf really?) and that they ban people that disagree with them about harassment (false).

In your opinion it is not true. Presumably you have only really looked at one side of events and accepted that without question. Maybe you like the latest FTB leak about keeping money derived from TF’s hits and dividing up the money between other FTB bloggers, or how PZ ‘hacked’ into a conversation himself yet now complains about others hacking?

As I noted, neither side has come out of it well, but it is far from one sided on who is/was to blame.

“It does not make sense to simply believe all claims, nor to always give the benefit of the doubt to a female.” – who said this? Nobody. We agree on this. Pointing this out implies that you are assuming the worst of other people’s positions and attitudes for no reason at all.

I have said repeatedly that accusations need to be investigated properly, that it is not a case of simply acting on the basis of a complaint. I did not say anything about assuming the worst, I pointed out you cannot take this at face value or just take the first to complain as correct. There would appear to be a problem with your comprehension of English.

What positions do you think I have – because it’s not that FtB is perfect. It’s that the positive claim that FtB bans people who disagree with them (or has any number of opinions as en entity of 39 writers) however much repeated, is not a fair accusation. TF shouldn’t have been invited, he wasn’t treated very well, he was hard to work with, his writing wasn’t that good, he went on the attack, he was asked to leave – that sucks, it’s not an important ideological indictment.

You may find it hard to believe, but I really do not care what positions you have.

FTB are far from perfect, and have not done themselves any good service over this entire episode. That Thunderf00t has behaved at least just as bad, if not far far worse – I expect far more shit to fly from both sides sadly – does not change problems from the FTB side. This entire sorry episode should have been handled very differently by both sides.

So, my positions are indefensible but you don’t care what they actually are. Brilliant. Of course more “shit is going to fly” – and it didn’t need to. We could all put this behind us “mistakes were made” – the end. However, then you have everyone high-fiving statements like: At FtB you get banned for disagreeing.

I never said you got banned at FTB for disagreeing, I noted a qualification you have left out because as others have noted, some issue are key to FTB and if you do not agree you have no place there. – Strawman 2

All put this behind us – Strawman 3 or stupidity 1? You are the one determined to take issue endlessly here. Is this the ‘attack any dissenting view’ that is often reported too?

Okay – you saying that disagreeing on harassment gets you banned. Which we already know isn’t true since bloggers on the network (who remain on the network) have disagreed on it. People commenting have disagreed STRONGLY and don’t get banned from FtB (if there is even a WAY to do that – since the blogs have separate moderation) TF didn’t have the ability to have an honest conversation about this and was difficult to work with – that’s why he was kicked out.

Then what’s your point? That FTB’s philosophical outlook is different than Thunderfoot’s? I think that was already established, and nothing about what you have said suggests that thunderfoot had any absolute right to write anti-feminist posts.

A good harassment policy wouldn’t have anything to say about elevator-gate unless it recurred, which it did not. In that case, Watson’s “no” and later rebuke was enough to deal with the problem.

If you’re concerned about malicious accusations (which don’t really exist anyway), then it’s possible to write a policy that accounts for them! You can have standards of proof, requirements of witnesses, and the like as part of a harassment policy. Your argument is comparable to saying we shouldn’t have fire evacuation procedures because sometimes fire alarms go off when there is no fire.

Equality does not mean ‘anti-feminist’ unless you seek to grant more rights to females than to males.

I said ‘such as elavatorgate and gave a specific situation that did not occur, namely that one party does pursue a claim of harassment. Now what do you propose to do to resolve this under a harassment policy? Please try to avoid making another strawman.

Opposition to a harassment policy is opposition to equality, because sexual harassment is one of the ways that women are, intentionally and otherwise, discouraged from participation in events such as atheist conferences. To turn a blind eye to it is to condone gender-based oppression.

If Watson had made a complaint, then an anti-harassment officer would have probably gone to the offending party and said exactly what Watson said later: “Don’t do that”. That’s all.

I never said I objected to a policy, legally they are essential. I just said they are often impossible to enforce and gave a specific example where this is the case, and similar to how many claims arise – one persons word against another.

As to ‘if the girl makes a complain’ why is she believed and the guy told to ‘not do’ something he may not have done? That is discrimination in itself. Having seen several instances of malicious claims like this over many years gives a good insight to problems.

If elevator-guy did not believe that the incident had happened the way Watson had recounted, then he would have an opportunity to say so when confronted by the anti-harassment officer. The conversation would go something like this:

“There was a complaint that you did X. You shouldn’t do that.”

“I didn’t do X. There was a misunderstanding.”

“Okay. Well regardless of that, remember to respect peoples’ boundaries in the future. Thanks for talking to me”.

“Okay. Well regardless of that, remember to respect peoples’ boundaries in the future. Thanks for talking to me”. – That isnt the end of it. This person now objects to you suggesting he ‘respect others boundaries’ and says he has never failed to do so, then making a counter claim that the other person has lied about it all and demands that they are dealt with for harassment. Now what?

This situation happened at a place I worked. Trust me, it was not easy to resolve.

If the subject of the complaint objects strongly to being reminded to respect others, then he needs to relax. A brief conversation is not a huge imposition on anyone, and there’s nothing wrong with an innocent party being reminded to be careful all the same. The most well-intentioned people still need a reminder from time to time. The officer does not need to take a position on the truth of the complaint.

The subject objects because he says he has respected other people and now says the initial complainant has lied & is therefore harassing him – true enough if the complaint has no substance. Unless the officer now takes the same action against this initial complainant, then this is discrimination & by not doing so is taking sides. Do you think no woman has ever made up such a claim? It is really hard to tell. Police forces with far more resources than conference staff struggle to find the truth.

You’re drawing a false equivalence. Nobody, whether guilty or innocent of harassment, has ever been seriously harmed by being asked to respect other people. Harassment itself, on the other hand, can cause serious harm. The interaction I have described does not convict anybody of anything, and can occur even if the complainant’s story is highly suspicious, because it does not cause any significant harm for the subject of the complaint. It has nothing to do with discrimination.

If the complainants story is highly suspicious, why are you even bothering to talk to the other person? The worst cases I have seen were where a man openly groped a woman and then simply denied it, and where a woman claimed a man raped her because he had earlier upset her in a row over a parking space! Both were fairly convincing for some time and it took a reasonable investigation to get to the truth in either case. I have even seen people actively avoid someone because they make so many claims

So then what is worse of the following two scenarios: slightly hassling the man who had the argument over a parking space, or allowing the man who committed an act of sexual assault to get off the hook?

Do you honestly believe that the rights of the innocent to not have a slightly uncomfortable conversation trump the rights of victims to have their complaints taken seriously?

It’s even simplier than that – with no reporting policy or well-thought-out remedies to various situations – people who falsely accuse (and however rare, they do exist) are more likely to be found out as false accusers – and the documents can be used as evidence for slander claims. The majority of harassment is generally people who think it’s funny or feel socially entitled – simply knowing that there may be consequences (official or social) goes a long long way.

Actually it was a case of a woman claiming rape against a man because she had lost out in a parking place dispute and took advantage of a situation later to extract revenge. So hassling the man in question over this was indeed wrong. Believing any female simply because they are female is absurd and discrimination.

Your last paragraph makes little sense. People need to be treated fairly and equally, with no priority to any gender. Investigations of claims are the same and need experienced people.

You’re strawmanning me pretty hard. I never once suggested that priority would be given to any one gender, or that women would be believed simply because they are women. A harassment policy can protect men who are harassed, as well. The point is that if you have a complaint of harassment to make, you have a right to have somebody listen to that complaint and take it seriously. That does not mean that somebody will automatically be punished.

I doubt the truth of your parking space story, but even if it is true, it was right to approach the man to hear his version of events. It was not known that the woman was lying, and to not investigate the matter would risk allowing a real rape to go unpunished.

It also merits mention that the kind of harassment that would be dealt with by these policies is much less severe than rape, which demands the involvement of the police. These issues can be solved with a simple conversation.

Police officers, which are a good deal more intimidating than anti-harassment officers at a conference, do not hesitate to interview suspects, witnesses and persons of interest (most of whom will be innocent), regardless of the inconvenience or offence it might cause them. Nobody objects to this, because it makes us all safer in the long run. Same goes for harassment complaints.

But the police interview both sides and look for evidence, they do not just listen to one person and then go and tell the other to do anything. When you end up in a situation where two people are accusing each other of harassment via one method or another – improper suggestion or false accusation – you cannot just ‘talk to one and remind them of how people should behave’ and not the other. Either way you have now likely offended an innocent party and been unable to help the real victim.

I’ve already said that a quick reminder to respect other people does not cause anywhere near the same amount of harm as sexual harassment. The utilitarian calculus here is pretty clear: it’s better to mildly offend a few overly-sensitive people than to allow real instances of harassment to go unanswered.

Also, false accusations really don’t happen that much. Why would a person waste their time at a conference by falsely accusing other people of harassing them?

However, if someone denies that it happened at all – it is useless to act as though they need reminding. If they say they didn’t do it, you privately consul them as if they didn’t do it – and most likely suggest they avoid the accuser and offer security support if they want it. If they did something and then said they don’t think they did anything wrong – then you take out the policy and explain that they need to follow the policy and if they are unwilling, they should leave.

If the person claims it never happened, then it’s best to remind them of the policy and of the need to treat other conference-goers with respect, then leave them alone. If they continue to behave in that manner, then there will be further complaints about them which will serve as further evidence for the truth of the original complaint. If this goes far enough, it will warrant some form of discipline.

No. “Continue” to behave in that manner? What if they didn’t in the first place? I’m not saying the issue shouldn’t be documented, only that if you speak to the person as if they are lying that’s going to cause a problem – regardless of whether or not that person is actually lying or not.

If the original complainant was lying, then there are unlikely to be any other people who complain about the behaviour. If there are further complaints, then they serve as corroborating evidence that something is going on.

No PZ can’t do what he likes at FtB because he isn’t actually dictator for life of it – he is one writer of many and he CANNOT make unilateral decisions for the entire network.

FtB is humanist – so yeah – feminism as in women don’t have less value than men is a must, just like not thinking black people are inferior is. What type of feminism or what specific stances you have on feminist issue or issues of harassment are not.

“Please don’t take this the wrong way” is harassment -how-? “I find you interesting” is a code for “I’MA RAPE YOU BITCH” in what twisted pseudo-reality, exactly?

Go fuck yourself first (Look, I’m even communicating at your level to put you at ease!). And while you’re at it, get Skepchick to take a good, long, hard look at how hypocritical she is, the sexist bitch.

“Accepting” views isn’t freethinking, in fact I’m pretty sure it’s the opposite of that. The poll was disturbing because it was a really bad way to make his point and his point wasn’t even relevant. PZ just said that it was a mistake to invite him in the first place. The reason he was invited is because PZ and he were friends. He wasn’t banned, he just doesn’t have a blog at FtB anymore.

If you are unable to accept others with views different to yourself, that is a dictatorship of thought where you determine what is and what is not acceptable for others to think and believe. Little different from the religious dogmas of the past. Does Atheism now have to come with radical feminism attached? I didnt see where Thunderf00t ever suggested people should be treated differently, indeed his message was equality, apparently equality is not what feminism is all about now though.

That fact that you immediately confused “people” with “views” says something. I said accepting views is not freethinking – it is criticizing views that would otherwise be held by the majority without question. However, this issue isn’t about that – however much TF thinks it is. He was difficult to work with AND his writing was bad. Other FtB bloggers have disagreed with specifics of sexual harassment policies, and not everyone at FtB has the same views on feminism.

Other FTB’s bloggers are not always easy to get on with, and some have bad writing styles too. That would therefore appear not to be the reason he was got rid of. Almost anyone with any workplace experience will have seen some people fail to fit in well in the first few weeks at times & subsequently fit in well enough.

His subsequent behaviour has been appalling if what is now being said is true, & it was childish enough anyhow. That was not the reason he was axed though.

How do you know? Seriously. Are you an FtB blogger? Were you involved in conversations behind the scenes? So, some bloggers are not always easy to get along with so there is NO way you can imagine he might have been worse? Are you so sure that they were ALL being so terrible that they deserve your insults for making a decision that you know isn’t your call? PZ is a disappointment. Carrier is apparently a liar. Do you understand how that isn’t being respectful.

FTB bloggers not getting on? Wow, see Greg Laden’s threats to other FTB bloggers, notably Justin Griffin, ironically published on FTB from the supposedly secret back channel. How can you not know this stuff?

PZ made two bad decisions maybe three, nowhere did I say he was a disappointment. Carrier I have not even mentioned yet alone called a liar. You clearly are a rather desperate individual now making things up. People earn respect, it is not deserved. FTB is no different & far from perfect.

Yeah Greg was kicked out for that. Really “secret” back channel? Yes, Justin published a private e-mail that was directed at him. He didn’t hack into the private listserve after getting kicked off. Of course you called Carrier a liar – and other bloggers too – with the insistence that FtB kicked off TF because of a disagreement on issues. You just said people should be treated with respect, right? PZ isn’t even the one who made the decision. I’m just sick of the misinfo.

So you shift from my not being able to know if FTB bloggers are difficult to get on with to agreeing one made actual threats to another! Presumably you do now concede not all FTB bloggers are easy to get on with, exactly my statement to start with.

If TF was only removed over writing style and being hard to get on with, why had problems arisen before he wrote a word? PZ admitted fault here.

PZ said he was the one who made the decision, so maybe you are source of your own ‘misinfo’ sickness.

PZ – you are an excellent biologist but when it comes to bar room behavior where people are drinking, getting drunk and having a good time, I would most humbly say that you don’t know what you are talking about. I agree with thunderf00t’s assessment in a bar 100%. It’s not a “safe place” and the bar ISN’T the conference. It’s an after conference hangout spot. Enter at your own risk of getting punched, have a beer tossed in your face or having your leg bitten. If you don’t like the bar, don’t go

I directly you to a point-by-point of one of his posts, which I wrote. If you are satisfied with only one example of his bad argumentation, he said that people who use the word “misogynist” to characterize their opponents are more likely to be wrong and posted up a fake graph showing a supposed linear correlation. Cute – but not good argumentation. I’ll send you the link through IM.

No – HE is confusing that. I mean, for F-sake he has a GRAPH explaining how the more you used labels the shittier your argument was. When his first post was torn apart, he did a bias poll of his own audience. He didn’t even bother presenting the alternatives neutrally – which is SUCH bad argument it’s borderline unethical. He also did this to attempt to show that FtB wasn’t representative of the “greater community” which they never claimed they were.

I just saw your correction. If you take it as a statement – it is that statement that a logically fallacy is true. Ironically it is actually an argument ad hominem. 1) If people use this language 2) they are wrong. So, he is implying that you can make a conclusion about a stance based on who said it – which is classic argument ad hominem.

You are right that this statement is a general statement that should not be used if “that people” are someone specific. General statements, even if they are true, should not be used against any specific person.

If “that people” is just anyone who use the word “misogynist” to characterize their opponents and not someone specific he is right to say so.

If used against someone specific in a specific debate then that would be wrong.

No, 1) labeling someone is not an argument ad hominem, unless you are attempting to use the label AS an argument 2) beyond that, using logical fallacies doesn’t mean you are more likely to be wrong, it just means your argument sucks. “Are you just trolling me?” is not an example of an argument ad hominem since it’s not even an argument.

Wrong. I am not a computer and neither are you. I can put a ? behind a sentence, but that doesn’t necessary make it a question. I can formulate a sentence so that it is not an argument, but yet the effect is the same. The effect of me saying George Bush are stupid when discussing he said, is the same as me saying he is wrong because he is stupid. Whether it is technically formulated as an argument or not is irrelevant as far as I am concerned.

Alternately when people feel strongly about whatever they have certain ideas they consider to be a given. Sometimes they are good ideas, other times they are crap. I’d be interested to hear about one of PZ’s strawmen though. Do you have a specific example?

Well for instance when Tf00t asked why Rebecca didn’t report the rape threats if they weren’t trolls and PZ then claimed that Tf00t said that all sexual harassment that isn’t reported to the FBI should be ignored.

Another straw-man is when PZ claimed that Tf00t tried to settle it by popular vote when in fact he was trying to show that the membership of FTB was not very representative of atheists and skeptics at large.

The 1st one isn’t a strawman, it’s gross misrepresentation. AKA lying. I haven’t seen it but it wouldn’t be the first thing I’ve facepalmed after hearing PZ say.

As to the second, a internet poll on TF’s page is a popular vote, and a hugely slanted audience. As for the later bit, the poor representation of women’s concerns in the larger activist atheist community is the speech RW gave, that made RD uncomfortable, which got the whole mess rolling.

There are a lot of smart people in the skeptic movement that are amazing at presenting facts and supporting arguments to back up their position, making it accessible to the most ignorant people. Points are repeated even when obvious.

But when it comes to the position of why men should not ask women for coffee-dates, I have yet to see/hear/read a single supporting idea other than Rebecca’s emotional comfort.

I want to believe it is possible to support equality while not siding with BW on this.

As for the definition of “free thought,” it would seem Myers is once again going on about matters he doesn’t understand. Free thought is defined by dictionary[dot]com as the following, “thought unrestrained by deference to authority, tradition, or established belief, especially in matters of religion.” I’ll leave it up to you the reader to decide whether or not PZ Myers is for free thought.

I’m no fan of Thunderf00t in the sense that I disagree with his stance on religion and theism.

However, PZ Myers is a little shit with a Napoleon complex. He appears to be a perverted old man who enjoys siding with naive malleable college girls no matter how irrational they’re being. Why? Who knows. Perhaps one day we’ll find out. Perhaps one day we’ll find out that PZ Myers has a dungeon filled with little girls.

I’m not a huge fan of thunderf00t, but PZ, you screwed up royally and you’re far too proud to admit it. I agree that there are limits to the kind of commentary that should be allowed on FTB, but did t’f00t’s stated opinion tread anywhere near this limit? I don’t think so. You’re normally a very rational guy, PZ, and I love your other work, but when it comes to gender issues you regress into a raving, irrational lunatic, like the creationists you so despise. I sincerely hope you right this wrong.

I have no problem with agreeing that Tf00t is a duchbag who is incapable of reasoned debate and I also agree that supporting the equality of woman and other minor groups is important. But does that mean aspects of feminism are exempt from criticism PZ? This isn’t an MRA making the point PZ, there are aspects of feminist discourse that appear to work against equality and I think it is worthy of raising in civilised debate.

Oh, don’t be silly. MRA is just a convenient label he can apply to people who disagree with him so he doesn’t have to deal with their real criticism.

Just like “chill girl” for women, just like they use “mansplaining” or “privilege”. I keep comparing it to the word “infidel”, because that’s really how they use it- Marking the “outsider” so that they don’t have to listen to them.

Why am I being silly? He does use the label MRA to dismiss people and their opinions. I wasn’t using it as a slur just trying to appeal to his reason.

I feel that aspects of Feminism should be open to criticism and it disturbs me as a rationalist and Atheist how dismissive PZ is of anybody who brings it up. Tfoot is often a Duchebag but PZ utterly not engaging with the matter is silly, that he might use the “MRA” excuse should be called out.

As I said there are good people within the mens rights movement and bad people, I feel it is unfair that mens opinions on their sexuality or control over their body (something Feminists have battled for) can be utterly dismissed and twisted into accusations of misogyny or being part of some supposedly radical camp with a particular label. For me it should be about equality but also recognising and celebrating the biological differences.

For the mens rights movement to work people who are activists within it shouldn’t leap into battle (as you have) against people who actually support many aspects of what they are campaigning for. I wasn’t attacking the mens rights movement, I was purely using the term that PZ himself does to dismiss their viewpoints and pointing out I was not an activist within that movement.

Well, before anyone accuses me of being a Tf00t fan… let me just say that whilst I greatly admired his science stuff & his early anti creationist work – I think it all went to his head. He enjoys public squabbling far too much for me to take him seriously these days.

But after re-reading the original posts & listening carefully to this vid one thing is absolutely clear:

PZ definitely DID straw-man him – then they both fought like 14 yr old youtube kids.

Check out zomgitscris channel, it’s her next to the most recent posting, I think it’s called convergence or something like that. It’s an hour long video, but I stopped watching it when the guy on the panel said that a man’s brain was a female brain damaged by testosterone and everyone laughed and clapped and he went on to say it wasn’t a joke.

Oh wow… that’s pretty fucking retarded. I mean I know a lot about neurology and how neurons work and if any of that panel had any degrees in neuroscience they would have called him out on that bullshit. Plus testosterone doesn’t fucking effect the chemical makeup of the brain other than the area that encodes for survival which also acts for aggression. I mean there are differences between the female and male brains… but what he said is pure bullshit.

He claims to have been making some rhetorical point, but I think that is only because he was called out on it and had to make something up. Feminism is a very polarizing issue and it doesn’t belong at atheistic conventions. We don’t go to their conventions and tell them their is no god.

I never thought I would hear PZ Myers making the typical internet mistake of confusing disagreeing with trolling. “He disagreed with us from the start. Clearly he was trolling.” Or, maybe he liked everything but one thing and was hoping he could bring about some change for the better. And the “not-an-apology” early on for “not having prevented him from joining” instead of kicking him afterward? Amazing. Stay classy, PZ.

What an interesting and unnecessary experience this has been for those at FTB and for numerous others. At the very least, it is not unreasonable to share that the trait of being unreasonable is a universal trait that can be possessed by even those who are self-professed as being rational. I so very much concur with the warranted vetting of potential applicants for when one’s organization possesses a meaningful mission and goal.

It’s an invite-only blog network with about 30 bloggers. If they asked me to blog on the network, I would be thrilled. The term “banning” is generally used for people who can no longer comment. He was not “banned”. His blog is no longer hosted at FtB. His blog is hosted elsewhere.

free thought and humanism aretwo different things. I could only watch the vid until you explained your “enlightenment” views. If anyone is against humanism (which is exactly what you are) They are banned. You are just as bad if not worse than the religious. Change your name to humanistsblog and you won’t be a liar.

“New Atheism” was built on the backs of heavyweights who had all written hard hitting best sellers. The social fabric was shaken by the approach of Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins and Dennet, appropriately dubbed no less than ‘the four horsemen’.

Now a series of bloggers, with conspicuously few achievements between all of them have decided that the community needs to be cleansed of subversive thought by expelling everyone who disagrees with them, and they are the ones to do it with a new movement called ‘Atheism Plus‘. The properties they most associate with folk like the horsemen are ‘old’ ‘white’ ‘male’ and ‘privileged’ (see below). Indeed a New Statesman article frequently quoted by the Freethoughtbloggers who started this, states quite clearly that:

“Atheism+ is a reaction against the “New Atheism” of Richard Dawkins”.

However they somehow manage to completely overlook the fact that the horsemen achieved their level of notoriety and recognition through ability and hard work, culminating in a series of best selling, ground shifting books: The God Delusion, God is NOT Great, Letter to a Christian Nation and Darwins Dangerous Idea to name but a FEW. The results of this can be seen when looking through the adword statistics where it actually turns out that Richard Dawkins alone is bigger than Atheism!

The Beatles may have been more popular than Jesus, but looks like Dawkins is now more popular than Atheism!

Dawkins, just so we are clear, has the prestigious academic title of Fellow of the Royal Society. That might not mean much to many, but it’s one of the higher awards given out by the Royal Society to people who made ‘ a substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathematics, engineering science and medical science”.
Seriously is there anything in the entirety of the ‘Atheism Plus’ movement that can even approach this level of accomplishment?

So the founders of ‘Atheism plus’ have decided that, despite their lack of any real achievement, that the real thing atheism needs right now is to throw the likes of the horsemen under the bus and to form a splinter movement (click, its sooo appropriate). That’s right the ‘Atheism plus’ will be gloriously free of older white men, irrespective of their actual contributions or achievements.

Jennifer McCreight, the founder of ‘Atheism Plus’ says what she thinks about old white men. Oddly enough ability and achievement don’t seem to factor into this equation at all!

So what are the founding principals of ‘Atheism plus’?

We are…
Atheists plus we care about social justice,
Atheists plus we support women’s rights,
Atheists plus we protest racism,
Atheists plus we fight homophobia and transphobia,
Atheists plus we use critical thinking and skepticism.

So ‘Atheism Plus’ gets off to this incredibly bad start where of their guiding principals, 2-4 are subsets of 1. Why that is becomes obvious when you see what’s bottom of the list of the ‘Atheism Plus’ manifesto. Bottom of the heap, no. 5 of 5 is ‘the use of critical thinking’. Yup critical thinking is bottom of the pile for ‘Atheism Plus’. I find it even more amusing as I am an atheist because of critical thinking (1. methodology, then 2. conclusion, y’know the logical way of doing it), whereas they start with the assertion that they are ‘Atheists Plus’, then later decide that critical thinking is a good thing. Conclusion before the methodology? very ass backwards!

Now enter the fray another Freethoughtblogger, held to be one of the more sane and rational FTBers (apparently), one ‘Richard Carrier’. Richard sets the standards high by asserting:

” And Greta Christina and others have taken up the banner: Atheism Plus: The New Wave of Atheism. I am fully on board. I will provide any intellectual artillery they need to expand this cause and make it successful.”

..and that would be all very fine and well if the rest of Carriers blog wasn’t so ridden with wildly over the top polarizing rhetoric of eradicating and purging dark evil impurities that threaten our purity of essence (as someone has noted, it sounds more like Mccarthyism and Ayn Rands hate child). Indeed, I can say without a hint of hyperbole or exaggeration that is more Third Reich like than ‘Third Wave of atheism’ like. Whats that? Godwins law I hear you say? Well judge for yourself! You really have see it to believe it…..here’s some highlights!

“Don’t assume that because someone else did that, that it’s covered and you can give it a miss. No, we need to show numbers. So speak out wherever you see these two sides at loggerheads, and voice your affiliation, so it’s clear how many of us there are, against them. And this very much is an us vs. them situation. The compassionate vs. the vile. You can’t sit on the fence on this one. In a free society, apathy is an endorsement of villainy.”

and

“Those who don’t, those who aren’t shamed by being exposed as liars or hypocrits, those who persist in being dishonest or inconsistent even when their dishonesty or inconsistency has been soundly proven, is not one of us, and is to be marginalized and kicked out, as not part of our movement, and not anyone we any longer wish to deal with.”

(yeah thats the way to win hearts and minds with your intellectual artillery!)

and

“I call everyone now to pick sides (not in comments here, but publicly, via Facebook or other social media): are you with us, or with them; are you now a part of the Atheism+ movement, or are you going to stick with Atheism Less? Then at least we’ll know who to work with. And who to avoid.”

and

Yes, it does. Atheism+ is our movement. We will not consider you a part of it, we will not work with you, we will not befriend you. We will heretofore denounce you as the irrational or immoral scum you are (if such you are). If you reject these values, then you are no longer one of us. And we will now say so, publicly and repeatedly. You are hereby disowned.

Yup, it’s real unashamedly divisive, brazenly polarizing totalitarian ‘you’re either with us or against us’ type stuff. But the really disturbing thing here is that if you do not entirely back ‘Atheism Plus’s dogmatically stated priorities, you are to be marginalized, excluded and attacked. To many of those who have escaped cults such as Scientology, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormonism this is the sort of viciously vindictive talk of retributional tactics that would likely give you flashbacks! It is this stated desire that people rather than ideas should be targeted that I find most disconcerting. OBEY OUR DOGMA OR BE DECRLARED A SUPRESSIVE PERSON! (you really should read this article, it is frighteningly similar to Carrier vision for ‘Atheism plus’).

But Carrier with his ‘intellectual artillery’ really doesn’t seemed to have thought this one through. So lets see, if American Atheists do not rename themselves ‘American Atheists Plus’, and identify themselves as ‘Atheists Plus’, Carrier will ‘know who to avoid’?
Well that’s an interesting proposition because it turns out that Richard Carrier and Greta Cristina are both scheduled to speak at the 2013 American Atheist convention in Houston.

Oh yes, it’s time for very red faces to take their list of world class achievements (/sarcasm) and ‘intellectual artillery’ and eat a very very VERY juicy slice of humble pie.

Given that American Atheists are NOT going to rename themselves as ‘American Atheist Plus’, or identify with this splinter group, this puts Richard Carrier and Greta Christian in a very difficult situation. Personally I think Carrier should write to David Silverman (a good guy!), the head of American Atheists in exactly the same terms he wrote to someone on his blog who said that they would remain, ‘just an atheist’

‘Atheism Plus’ should really stick with his guns here and tell these inferior ‘American Atheists’ what they think about them.

If they had any dignity or commitment to their ‘third glorious age’ of ‘Atheism Plus’, they would lead by example and write to David Silverman telling him that he, and his organization, is to be marginalized and excluded as there is no room for fence sitter in their new empire of pure ‘Atheism Plus’ and they will no longer be attending any conferences run by these mere inferior ‘atheists’. Indeed, personally I would encourage them to hold with their beliefs and splinter off with their pious, self-righteous, holier-than-thou ‘witch hunting’ sect.

But I’ll wager their commitment to ‘Atheism plus’, despite all their pompous rhetoric, is paper thin, and that we will not rid ourselves of these Mccarthyism type atheists so easily. I’ll wager the parasites will realize that without ‘New Atheism’, which let us not forget was born from the achievements of people with actual ability, y’know hard hitting heavyweights types, they cannot survive. I expect that they will now start trying to weasel their way out of this by any and all means necessary as long as the conclusion is ‘no, it’s okay for ME to attend mere atheist conferences, its just everyone else who should shun and marginalize these mere inferior atheists’

I guess we will have our answer soon enough about Richard Carrier and Greta Christinas commitment to ‘Atheism Plus’ by whether they pull out of the American Atheist convention or not.

So Ed Brayton, thats the leader, or owner or something of freethoughtblogs is now referring to me in these terms:

“I want to do whatever it takes to make sure that he is essentially drummed out of this movement, never invited to speak anywhere again and is forever a pariah.”

Awwww, what did I do to be referred to in these terms you may ask?

Turns out freethoughtblogs has a secret mailing list which they use, among other things to conspire against people (indeed I laughed when they cooked up what they thought was the ‘least damaging story’ to FTB for my expulsion. Boy did the truth take a backseat in that thread!). Now as with many top secret mailing lists of course FTB has some footer saying how everything on this mailing list is ultra-confidential (kinda a contradiction of terms in my books sending out ‘secret information’ to an entire mailing list) but that doesn’t stop FTB OPENLY disclosing/ leaking whatever they want on that list when it suits their purpose. For instance they were quite happy to openly talk about Greg Ladens ‘threats of violence’ on the mailing list and PZ was quite happy to discuss the happenings of this ‘ultra confidential’ list in his video (sorry too late to delete the evidence boys, I’ve got it all!). Oddly enough, freethoughtblogs did nothing to admonish this sickening and evil violation of trust, or write blog posts about how this could result in the exposing of peoples real identities, people losing jobs, getting turned into newts and burned at the stake or some shit. Nor do they seem to realize that their main beef that I ‘stole their personal details‘ is clearly stupid. I, and everyone else on that mailing list, would have had all of those details (whatever they actually are, I still have no idea) anyways from when they originally signed me up to the mailing list. So what exactly are these personal details they think I’ve ‘stolen’ here?

Secondly I DONT FUCKING DOC DROP.

Even if I actually knew what this personal information was (I seriously have no idea who most these people are) I wouldn’t care, because:

I DON’T DOC DROP. Never have done. Never will.

Honestly if I were in FTBs shoes I would worry about the other guy they expelled, Greg Laden, who also has access to all their personal data. He has a history of threatening people on FTB and stalking people elsewhere. Like tracking people down in real life and trying to get them fired (Abbie Smith of the blog ERV) etc etc. Notably this was all done while Greg was at FTBs.

Now I always found the behavior of the folks on freethoughblogs on this secret list to be kinda cliquish, where chinese whispers morph from rumors to facts within one or two emails. For instance, when I first joined I was accused of being an ‘rape culture apologist’ guilty of ablism, devaluing addicts, and not being careful between challenging islam and outright racism, all based on no evidence whatsoever! ya freethought at work!

Many emails on this list were on points on which “everyone” on FTBs agreed, simply for the applause of everyone who responded. There was a LOT of self-congratulation and self-re-enforcement (herding) behavior there. Conversely even modest disagreement was greeted with snide derision. The sad thing is that freethoughtblogs refer to themselves in humor as ‘the hive mind’ and as ‘free thought bullies’, when in reality both are actually fairly accurate descriptions. So why is any of that important?

So a week or so ago a guy called Michael Payton who works for CFI Canada (Center for Inquiry) put up a tweet about finding FTB unreadable. Now it turns out ironically Michael is on FTBs side on the issue of harassment policies at conferences (well mostly), however that didn’t matter if he was going to speak ill of freethoughtblogs and this precipitated an angry torrent of twitters from at least one FTBer and another to write an entire blog post about it (promoted by PZ Myers of course), and as with all such posts on FTB he (Payton) was repeatedly branded in the comments section with pejorative terms such as misogynist and MRA (the irony being that he posted an article on skepchick ‘speaking out against hate against women‘ FACEPALM). Indeed it turned out that merely hours after this tweet, CFI Canada had been contacted with calls for his dismissal. Yes his real life job was being threatened because of one tweet about FTBs!

That was a pretty disturbing turn of events having someones job targeted so quickly after a single tweet about FTBs, and after a brief chat with Michael, and knowing that FTB were going ballistic about this on their secret backchannel with some THIRTY messages being circulated on the backchannel about his single tweet, let him know what they were saying about him (naturally no personal details were passed on). Michael did not want to know, he did not need to know that personal info.

This is some of the chatter I passed on to Michael.

Just an early warning, I’m strongly leaning towards publicly making a minor deal of this – not focusing on Payton exclusively, but just as an example of the general attitude of dismissing all of FTB despite not being familiar with hardly any of us – *unless* there’s either an actual apology to us or some kind of sufficient reason for why it would be a bad idea to draw attention to his remarks at this time, such as a relevant illness.

WTF is it with FTBs and skepchick always wanting people to apologize for stuff? Anyways they continue:

I’m usually not one to get involved in internal disputes in the movement, but if a national leader of the SCA or American Atheists had been so openly dismissive of FTB as a whole, I imagine we wouldn’t just let that pass unnoticed. So I’d just like to know if there’s any good reason why I shouldn’t do this, even if I can’t necessarily be privy to the details of it.

Translation: is it safe to do a knife job on this guy?

and

“But his statement was so broad, so casually dismissive of some of the smartest people in this movement (me among them, I’d like to think), that he can’t really be surprised that one of them took offense at it and criticized him for it, can he?”

What sort of person actually writes shit like that? (well Ed Brayton as it turns out). I’m guessing you can see at this point why they are so terrified of this stuff becoming public. Personal details my ass!

Well FTB found out that I had given Michael Payton access to this information, I then became the subject of the secret societies wrath. This is just one example of MANY. This is Ed Brayton (the head/ owner or similar of FTB) talking about what he wants done to me.

“I want to do whatever it takes to make sure that he (thunderf00t) is essentially drummed out of this movement, never invited to speak anywhere again and is forever a pariah.”

That’s right, all I did was clued someone in whose job was being threatened as to FTBs little conspiring (some THIRTY emails over his single tweet!) against him and for this heinous crime FTB now wants me ‘drummed out of the community’ as ‘a pariah’. And now this whistle blowing action is being reported on FTBs as:

To be honest when I first got the take down notices, about 6 of them in an hour or so (4 content inappropriate with no chance of appeal, and two privacy complaints) I thought,

‘another harassing and minor annoyance in running the channel. A quick email to YT should sort it out.’

I was then simply stunned when youtube claimed these videos had been reviewed by professional and impartial moderators and were removed for either hate speech or privacy violation. The more so as some of these videos constituted some of the milder things I’ve said about religion. The bottom line was, if this really was the new bar for hate speech, not only would it in an instant render the Thunderf00t channel unviable, it would render virtually every rationalist channel unviable. Youtubes actions were simply unintelligible. Indeed if someone had told me these were youtube actions, I simply wouldn’t have believed them. But there were the words on the screen in black and white.

I had no option but to make the video “Youtube starts banning ‘religiously offensive’ videos“. There were simply no other alternatives. A fairly high stakes game given that youtube could easily have said my action violated the terms of service and just killed the account. But then again, if the words I had in black and white on the screen were correct, then channel was already dead, and the only thing left to do was give a good accounting of itself before the inevitable banhammer.

By coincidence this happened about one week after the Hamza Kashgari incident.

Kashgari made about 3 vanilla tweets mildly critical of Islam only to find himself in fear for his life. He fled Saudi, only to be arrested in Malaysia. There he was deported back to Saudi with no due process to face a potential death sentence over three tweets. That’s fucked up beyond ALL recognition. But it really underscores the problem that religions find arbitrary things offensive. Given this simple observation, having a clause in the Terms of Service about not offending religions is simply incoherent.

If youtube really is willing to give religion this latitude of freedom, and to further scale what they consider ‘hate speech’ by how offended people are, then youtube would inevitably find itself in thrall to the Imams. Many of them find anything that is not Islam offensive beyond comprehension, as was demonstrated by the Imam crying over the three tweets of Kashgari calling them ‘the worst thing he’d ever read’.

So it was that I wrote potentially my last email to youtube asking them to apply whatever policy they had uniformly, which, taking ‘The Best emotional PORN‘ as the benchmark, would mean either about 7/10 of my videos would be hate speech, and they should delete them and ban my account, or reinstate the videos (which are vanilla compared to some of the videos on my channel).

The BEST emotional PORN, the new bar for ‘hate speech’, Really?

Thankfully, some 48 hrs later, with over 17000 thumbs up, well over a thousand mirrors and ~160k hits Youtube had a change of heart over what constituted hate speech.

Now I have mixed feelings about this. The Churchill quote about ‘The United States will always do the right thing…. once all other options have been exhausted’ kept coming to mind.

Sure Youtube had done the right thing, and had the humility and plasticity to correct their previous mistake (a fairly honorable and humble act), but only once all other options had been exhausted. You then look at what other options youtube had on the table (banhammer, ignore or stick to original judgment), and this is BY FAR the most dignified thing they could have done.

So all things considered, I think this is as happy an outcome as could have been hoped for. For the strong response of the community (and yes, it was the communal action that made this possible, for I as an individual had tried to take this to a sensible resolution and failed (I have the gut feeling it was not my email that swung the balance here)) ensured that free speech is maintained on this forum.

This time a decade ago, no one had even heard of youtube, nor did the bandwidth really exist for the project. The emergence of Youtube was unforeseen by, well lets be real, everyone. Microsoft was left standing, as was Google. The access of users to cheap video editing equipment, and further simultaneously given access to the vast array of various uploaded media clips led to an explosion of creativity.

However as time progressed, expectedly those who did well acquired a disproportionate amount of the traffic. Now, I don’t have the figures, but a comparative handful of users provide the significant lions share of the traffic. This has had two detrimental effects on youtube.

1) The forum has lost a significant portion of its vibrancy, in that it used to be that you could come back to youtube in a week or twos time and everything would be different. This is not true anymore. You come back in months time and it’s pretty much the exact same people doing exactly the same thing. It’s no longer really youtube, but the ‘same old-same old’tube.

2) The barriers to entry are now essentially prohibitively high. As a few get a large amount of the traffic, the barriers to entry are huge compared to what they were when youtube was relatively a flat and fair forum. Indeed almost the only way to now establish yourself on youtube is with the help of someone who is already established, or to have an existing audience for whom you start making videos, or to simply have a truck full of cash to throw at the problem.

So is there a solution to this? Is there a way that youtube can regain it’s vibrancy? Well that’s where many minds are better than one and I ask for your take on this.

The following is my suggestion: One way to do this which is arguably dead before it starts is by biasing the YT search algorithms against established players. Now YT will not want to do that on several levels. Firstly ‘established players’ are the ‘cash cows’, they are the ‘known commodities’ that people come to youtube for. Secondly of course, those partner would be pretty unhappy having put all that work into establishing a channel merely for YT to come along and decide ‘bad luck fellas, but YT needs more variety’. It would also send a lousy message about the relationship between media producers and youtube. Finally of course, who is likely to fill this gap? Lamentably imitation is easier than innovation and for every youtube ‘celebrity’ there are probably 10 wannabe clones. Even if youtube were to tweak its search engine, would it really help?

Maybe a more viable alternative is to create a second ‘pool’ of users. A ‘youtube hatchery’ so to speak that allows small channels to grow free of the competition of the bigger players (a different front page). Limit the hatchery to users with less than 10k subscribers or so, and have a separate front page for them. The environment would allow people to establish themselves on a smaller forum before competing in the full YT forum where currently they get almost no attention.

Other than that, it looks to me like youtube has matured and hardened into its adult form, never to see significant changes again, or if it does, it will be more akin to glacial speeds!